


DEAD-DEAD

by fellstars



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Slow Burn, Trans Characters, found family trope, non-binary characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25707247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fellstars/pseuds/fellstars
Summary: On the eleventh day of the Ethereal Moon, the dead rose.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Lysithea von Ordelia, Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro, Dorothea Arnault/Petra Macneary, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra, Hapi/Constance von Nuvelle, Jeritza von Hrym/My Unit | Byleth, Marianne von Edmund/Hilda Valentine Goneril, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan, Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/Bernadetta von Varley
Comments: 28
Kudos: 66





	1. CHAPTER ONE: AZURE MOON.

**Author's Note:**

> OK!! CHAPTER ONE OF ????? I'M SO PUMPED
> 
> been mulling over this concept for some time now and i think i'm ready to bring it together... i have the broad plot pretty much figured out and there's just so many ideas i can't wait to write down. thank you also to sammy who helped me edit this first chapter! they're an absolute star, please be sure to check out their own fics [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupsofstardust)
> 
> FIRST THINGS FIRST: if you are sensitive to gore i suggest not reading! im not too sure how violent descriptions may become over the course of this fic, but i'd rather you all be safe than sorry. same thing applies to major character death! again, it's more of a precautionary tag in case i do decide to have things take a turn, so please be careful!
> 
> SECOND OF ALL i'll be posting this gradually as i write, and how long it will take in between chapters for me to write, edit and post i am not entirely sure, but my plan is to always have at least half of the upcoming chapter written before posting the one before it if that makes sense... until then this is also sort of an interest check? if enough people read this and kudos + comment on it, i'll be way more motivated to work on (and finish) this fic :D so please do feedback, it helps more than you could ever imagine!!
> 
> think that's all from me for the moment... for now ENJOY!!
> 
> (also im sorry if my fodlan geography is a little unstable fuck geography all the homies hate geography)

The stream was cold. The ice that covered it had melted a few weeks earlier, and as Felix dipped a toe into the glassy, near-still body of it, he flinched. Winter had given way for spring, which was hardly better than its predecessor. Faerghus seasons in general had only slight differences from each other, so it wasn’t as though Felix was holding his breath and expecting by some miracle to have waters fit for a hot bath.

No; the stream was cold. But he bit the inside of his cheek and walked on in anyway. His clothes hung from the tree branch next to the stream, and though he lacked even something as simple as a bar of soap, he still knelt into the bank and shivered as the water numbed the rest of his skin. He couldn’t recall very well the last time he had bathed. It wasnt't like he had a calendar in his pocket to cross days off with each set of the sun, and his phone had been a lost cause months ago. What he knew with confidence, though, was that it had been a while.

Grime and sweat and blood gave way for bare skin, scarred in some places and bruised in others. He didn’t have to look as his misshapen reflection to know his ribs were more visible than they had been before. He could feel the grooves of them under his fingertips as he scrubbed as well as he could, pulling a face as he spared a moment to trace them. He jolted when a fish nudged his ankle. He huffed. Fishing could very well be an option soon. All they needed was a rod. Or a net. Felix could make a net, if they found the rope for it. Until then, they would have to settle on whatever canned shit they would find during raids.

He heard a twig snap.

Annoyance flared in his chest. “You better not be watching me.”

“I’m not,” Dimitri assured, having the decency to sound at least a little embarrassed. Felix was just glad he hadn’t pointed out the fact that they had seen each other naked multiple times before in childhood. “I was just making sure there’s none around.”

Felix raised one bent leg to his chest, balancing himself on the other as he cleaned in between his toes. “I already did that. Go watch our shit.”

A pause. Felix continued to bathe, switching his legs out. “You know the signal.”

“I’ll be fine.” The grit of his teeth hurt faintly, but his tight shoulders loosened as he heard Dimitri’s retreating steps. “I don’t need help, from a boar or otherwise.” He said the last part to himself, out of spite and pettiness and simmering, pent-up rage. Even if Dimitri had heard it, he would have nothing to bite back with. No, Dimitri kept that bite for the undead-dead. Felix felt a bitter taste in his mouth, and spat into the stream. He cupped his hands and poured water over his head. They could use a bucket. Felix wasn’t sure how carrying it around would work.

He stank of soil, and sweat, and baked beans, and rot, and blood. Before long, he started associating that smell with being alive—surviving yet another day, the splatters of red on his jacket and caked mud at the hem of his pants being the evidence of his struggle. Rips on his sleeves from branches he’d fallen back on or the grip of the dead let in the cold of the spring. His hair was tangled, knotted and matted, sticking to his forehead. His mouth felt dirty; they had run out of toothpaste some time ago again. But Felix was still alive.

Still alive. He wondered when that would change.

He felt warm in his clothes once he trudged back from the stream despite goosebumps travelling up his arms in them earlier, tightening his belt around his waist. It was an extra hole to thread it through before his pants fit. He held his machete tightly in his left hand, pushing his unkempt and uneven fringe from his eyes with the other. He was due to hastily cut at the longer, more irritable strands soon with a dagger. Maybe the next time they find some sort of abandoned gas station with a few, hardly functioning bathrooms, he could use a mirror there to try and at least even his hair out since his previous attempt.

Dimitri was putting out the fire as Felix emerged from the thicket and into the slight clearing they had set up camp. He looked up at him briefly, acknowledging it was Felix joining him, and not some unwanted company. Dimitri picked his rucksack up from the frigid forest floor and slipped one strap over a shoulder. He gestured to the small, shitty tent they took turns sleeping in at night.

“Baked beans in there for you. They’re still a little warm.”

Felix said nothing in return, walking past Dimitri and peering into the tent for his breakfast. Indeed, half a can of baked beans stood there, waiting for him. He knew Dimitri had split the can between them, having eaten half himself and left the rest for Felix. As per the typical procedure.

“I think this area is familiar. If my gut is right, there should be a small town maybe ten or so miles away. We should try and raid whatever food and medicine we can find there and try and find another place to stay the night.” Dimitri pointed in a direction, said town unseen through the growth of the forest, even with how barren the trees were. Felix figured it was better than nothing, if they would even reach the place before the sky would darken again.

“Fine,” he said.

Dimitri nodded, understanding he wouldn’t get much else out of him. “I’ll take a dip.” He headed to the same stream Felix had just left.

When his mop of blond hair disappeared into the shadows, Felix sighed and sat down, ass on the tent floor and legs sprawled out on the ground outside in front of him. He raked the fork (they had no spoon) inside around the can, scraping at the metal to try and gather as much of the sauce onto the remaining beans as he could. He piled some onto his fork, clicking his tongue when a few fell back into the tin, and then shoved it into his mouth. Over time, he had learned to refrain from twisting his face in disgust after each mouthful, but that might also just be him being all too used to the taste of them, though not willingly. He could probably count on a single hand the amount of days he skipped out on the taste of the shit. Some rabbit meat would be in the mix, or another type of wild, forest animal they might have been lucky enough to catch, but winter had left them at a loss. Dimitri had said it hadn’t been the worst winter they’ve ever had, probably one of the softer kinds. Felix found himself begrudgingly agreeing.

Next winter might not be so forgiving. If they even made it to the next winter, that was. Felix wasn’t sure which fate he rooted for more. Whatever hope he had of escaping this hell was dampened as the days grew into weeks, then months. He knew it hadn’t been a year, though. Not yet. There was that at least. But maybe he might not even see the transition to the Ethereal Moon which would mark it. He chewed slowly as he processed that. Felix was known for being headstrong and opinionated, but he couldn’t conjure many stances on their current situation. Dimitri was no different, he was well aware.

Birds flew above him, their squawks rousing him from his thoughts. He looked up. The sky was cloudy, but not grey enough to make him worry about rain disturbing their walk to the supposed nearby town, if Dimitri and his stupid gut were right (which, to Felix’s annoyance but their overall advantage, usually were). He finished the beans and wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand, setting it aside before moving to fold the tent away and into its bag. He would carry it today, since Dimitri carried it the day before. If the boar had any sense, this time he wouldn’t try insisting on carrying it himself, flaunting his strength. He was insulting enough as it were.

Felix was pushing the tent back into its bag when he threw a look over his shoulder at the sudden sound of movement behind him. Dimitri’s hair dripped a little, staining his coat with drops of water. He looked more tired after washing off all the dirt on his face. Felix didn’t doubt he looked similar, duffle bags under his eyes mirroring Dimitri’s own. Sleep, whenever it came, was rarely ever good for what it was.

“Need help?” Dimitri asked once he was close enough.

“No,” Felix told him shortly.

He could hear the slight grimace to Dimitri’s voice. “Alright. Whenever you’re ready.”

Felix zipped the bag up and dropped his rucksack to the ground, rummaging for the string to tie the tent bag to it. Dimitri handed it over to him, it evidently being hidden in his own bag. Felix accepted it, and tied the bags together, knotting the string tightly. Satisfied, he hoisted both onto his back, refraining from letting out a grunt at the weight. The tent was a small, almost pitiful thing, but with all the rods that held it up, it made his pack heavier. Dimitri’s gaze flitted over to him in mild concern, but Felix’s face must have been steeled enough to keep him from voicing it.

They walked in silence through the trees, with Felix clutching his machete, ready to raise it at any given moment, and Dimitri using his lance as a walking stick. The forest floor was all sorts of brown hues, dead, fallen leaves littering it. Some crunched under their boots, but besides that, the air was still. Not many animals had yet awoken from hibernation or found the courage to step out of their homes for more than scavenging for food, so as far as the pair of them were concerned, they were the only ones alive in the area. They _hoped_ that, anyway. Hiding in the forest had kept the walkers out of their way for the most part, and hopefully they wouldn’t face much trouble on their way out and then into the town.

Felix figured Dimitri’s knowledge of forests and woods and their surrounding areas came from his camping trips with his father. He never asked though, he didn’t care enough to confirm many suspicions. As long as he led them to food and other necessities to keep them going, Felix would reluctantly follow. There were a few moments where Dimitri would stop and gather his bearings, considering his surroundings (though Felix felt as though there was little to consider, with the sparse selection of trees, streams, and more trees). Just because Dimitri had said the area felt familiar did not mean he would find their desired location without any problem. It wasn’t too rare for them to circle back sometimes, only to end up at the same spot an hour later. Felix would grow impatient, kicking at the rocks amongst the dead leaves, which would spur Dimitri into some sort of better awareness of their whereabouts before leading them out and into the right direction. Surprisingly, that only happened once in their attempt out of the forest.

Dimitri jumped slightly as a few birds took flight from a nearby tree, and Felix snickered. If he continued being so jumpy, he would be the first of the two of them to go, no doubt. Could Felix survive alone? He wasn’t sure how far he wanted to entertain that thought. They passed a sign pointing to where they had come from, the text faint from the beat of the summer sun that was absent now, but clearly shone hard enough in the past, but Felix could make the words out: _CONAND CAMPING LAND._ Conand. Just below both the Fraldarius and Blaiddyd territories. They had traveled far since Fhirdiad, and on foot no less. It made sense, considering how long they had spent, going from one area to the next, and the time they had estimated had passed.

“I remember now,” Dimitri’s voice cut through the silence. Felix kept looking ahead of them. “The town we should be reaching soon will be the one bordering Galatea territory.” He sounded sombre at the mention of Galatea land. Felix could practically hear the unspoken question— _I wonder if Ingrid is faring well._ Or, Felix felt the need to add onto this conversation in his head, if she was even alive still.

Instead, though, he said, “Probably abandoned. People would consider their best bet being the Tailteu Plains.”

Dimitri nodded slowly. “Of course, it’s too close to the capital. Fhirdiad is absolutely overtaken. I imagine surrounding areas will soon be no different, if they aren’t already.”

“They wouldn’t know that, not with how close they border the Alliance,” Felix pointed out.

Neither of them said anything else on the matter, the chill that ran down both their spines not bred entirely from the passing breeze. Not many had been lucky enough to escape Fhirdiad, not with how much of the dead swarmed the streets there. So many came from the hospital, others from morgues. The rest came from graveyards. Felix remembered the sirens, belonging to police, ambulances and fire engines alike. Then the whirl of helicopters. And the screams that just didn’t seem to have an end. How long ago had Felix woken up in Fhirdiad for the last time, unbeknownst of the jaws of hell unhinging? He was forced to a sudden stop before he could dwell on it more. Dimitri’s arm stuck out, keeping him from walking farther, and Felix pushed it off.

They had emerged from the trees, and were greeted by an empty road. Not too far in the distance were some signs elaborating on their whereabouts and where to turn for what destination, rooted to the ground. Felix would have told himself today seemed optimistic if he were an idiot. There were no optimistic days. Just ones where you lived, and ones where you didn’t. Their boots scraped the asphalt of the road, mostly clear of any fallen trees, or the spread of dead leaves by the wind. Even more surprising (and perhaps suspicious) had been the lack of any blood or guts spilled there, too. Felix wasn’t confident in letting his guard down, though.

“I was right,” Dimitri said when they came into reading distance of the sign. Conand Town was about six miles away. He wasn’t too pleased about that, Felix knew. Three hours of walking in the worst case scenario. Two in the best. “Do you have much more water left?”

Felix ditched his bag on the side of the road, rummaging for hopefully at least a bottle. He grabbed one of the metal canisters and swirled the liquid inside. “Just under half, maybe,” he told him.

Dimitri sighed. “We’ll have to pace ourselves. If we walk too quickly, we’ll burn out easier. It can’t be any later than ten in the morning, so we should reach the town by mid-afternoon, if we’re lucky enough to make our journey without incident.”

“I doubt it.” Felix put his pack back on, mourning how heavy it was after the bliss of even the most temporary release from its weight. “The closer you get to a town, the more of the dead there are.”

Agreeing with a low hum, Dimitri looked at his watch. It had run out of battery a time ago, but Dimitri still wore it at his wrist. A gift from his father. Felix supposed he wasn’t one to exactly judge. He refused to cut his hair short. “Well,” Dimitri dropped his hand back to his side. “I suppose we shouldn’t waste any time. We’ll take breaks when we think we can spare them, but we must ration our water and food scraps until we manage to restock later.” _If_ they get to restock later. The chances of there being much for them to shove into their bags and carry to their next pitstop seemed slim.

They kept walking, falling back into silence. Even if they had much to talk about, or if Felix even felt willing to hold a conversation with Dimitri outside of survival, they would’ve kept their mouths shut. Sounds and scent. Those were the easiest ways to attract the dead. Not many of them had the best eyesight, which was fortunate in a fight, but that only meant their other senses were heightened. Typically, though, it was more likely for you to spot them before they spotted you.

The two of them probably walked for an hour, maybe just a little over before they stopped. They sat on the edge of the road, limiting water to two small gulps each, and then split (half of) a hard loaf of bread, careful to avoid the moulding areas. Felix took his pack off and let his back rest, even if it was just for a few minutes. He cut Dimitri off when he suggested they should take turns carrying the tent, glaring daggers at him for even thinking of such a thing. Felix wasn’t weak, he could handle it. He remembered going on hikes with Glenn and his father when he was younger for even longer and up steep hills and mountains. If thirteen-year-old Felix could manage that, then nineteen-year-old (maybe he was twenty now, he wasn’t too sure) Felix could manage a long walk on flat asphalt. Except nineteen-maybe-twenty-year-old Felix hadn’t had a proper meal since before the first fall of snow.

“My memory isn’t the clearest, but I think there may be some clothing stores around in town, too. We could try and pick something out. Some new pants at the very least could do us both some good.” Dimitri poked his pointer finger through the slight tear at his thigh to prove a point.

“We can’t depend on stores for much longer. I doubt there’s much more shit still in them for us to grab, and even then, they’ll stop being weather appropriate sooner or later.” Felix kicked at a pebble, and it skittered away into the grass.

Dimitri drummed his fingers on his lance. “I… You’re right. What will we do then?” He turned his head to look at Felix, who pushed his brows together.

“Steal from the dead-dead?”

Dimitri chewed on the inside of his cheek. “It’s… risky. We don’t know what’s even keeping them from being, well, _dead-_ dead. What if we catch it?”

Tired of talking, Felix said bluntly and with hopefully enough irritation in his tone, “Become dead-dead ourselves.”

Either it worked, or the idea mortified Dimitri enough to keep him quiet. Felix didn’t care much, if at all. After that, they exchanged no words until a walker came into their line of sight. They had arrived at another sign, promising at least another forty-five minutes of travel until they would reach the town, and Felix saw it drag its feet far enough to figure it safe enough to whisper.

“Walker.” He elbowed Dimitri, pointing.

Dimitri tore his gaze away from the sign and followed Felix’s finger. “Looks like it’s alone.”

With a nod, Felix said, “Throw your lance like a javelin and aim at it. I’ll end it off if you miss.”

Dimitri never missed, they both knew that. “Alright,” he said anyway. “Cover me. If any more turn up, we regroup.”

Felix watched as Dimitri moved towards the walker, its groans reaching his ears now as he strayed behind Dimitri. They sounded breathy, almost like a whimper but too throaty all at once. Dimitri raised the lance, readying his aim. The walker hadn’t spotted him yet, with one eyeball dangling out of its socket, and its nose bashed in, likely beyond function. That was also good—that meant the only solid thing it had to direct itself to Dimitri was its ears. Dimitri’s steps stirring its interest was proof of that. It changed its course of direction, leaning more to where Dimitri was approaching it.

Dimitri threw his lance, his aim perfect as it shot through the walker’s skull. It made a sick, gasping sound as it fell to the ground onto its back, and Felix watched in disgust as it writhed. A pool of dark red formed on the road. Felix stepped forward, mindful of keeping his legs out of grabbing distance, and pressed a boot down on the walker’s windpipe. It shrieked weakly out in pain, the noise reminding Felix of nails on a chalkboard, and tried to lift its arms to claw at him. With two swift movements, his machete sliced them off. Its singular eye rolled to the back of its head, and Dimitri pulled his lance out, its tip dripping with more blood. He stuck it back in, hard and sure, and wriggled the point inside the walker’s skull. With one last, feeble gasp, it stopped.

With a grunt, Dimitri pulled his lance out again, wiping it clean on the walker’s clothes. “It’s dead.”

“Thank you for stating the obvious,” Felix clipped, wiping his machete’s blade against one of the trees. The smell would’ve made him puke if it weren’t so familiar. “We should keep going, unless you want to stick around to see if it had a friend.”

It did. Several, in fact. The rest of the trek to Conand Town was slowed down by a few more walkers, for the most part slugging along alone. Only once did Dimitri and Felix have to focus on a walker each, with blood splattering Felix’s front as he decapitated the one he was fighting, sending the head off like a baseball with a bat. The body dropped instantly, and Felix only just managed to side-step out of the way before going to chase down the rolling head, his machete gutting its skull of its brains. When he turned, he saw Dimitri was finishing off his own walker, the drawn back snarl of his lips almost making Felix shiver.

He caught Felix’s eye as he got his lance out from the flesh, panting a little as he raised one hand to brush his hair away. He swallowed at the look Felix gave him, then ducked his head. In shame? Embarrassment? Felix didn’t know. The dead weren’t allies by a mile, but the way Dimitri dealt with them...

If Felix had become one of them, would he be struck down the same way? Brutally winded by the force of his flying lance, then skewered, destroying what little sentience still remained?

“We’re almost there,” Dimitri told him, voice gruff. Felix only clenched his jaw and kept walking.

Conand Town was devoured.

Felix didn’t think he had ever been there while people inhabited it, but Dimitri had, and his hardened expression and hooded eyes told him that it was almost unrecognisable. Most glass windows and doors were smashed, shards littering the concrete there. Cars were left abandoned on the roads, some driven into trees or buildings, or onto the pavement before leaving the doors hanging open. Whatever signs might have flickered, enticing and welcoming any customers, had died out long ago. Everywhere Felix looked, there was some blood—dried, but blood nonetheless—along with rotting remains and sprawled organs and brains. It was a horror to behold.

Dimitri said nothing about it. It wasn’t worth wasting breath over. Felix imagined Fhirdiad looked no different, probably worse. As they crept through the empty town, Felix saw how some doors to homes were swung open, creaking in the wind. Walkers seemed to be attracted to the noise, and hovered around the area. Some stood, looking out of windows with unseeing eyes, if not missing entirely then a milky white. Imprints of blood—hands of different sizes, the shapes of bodies—were on some walls, lasting marks of desperation.

“We should stick together,” Dimitri proposed. “There’s too many of them around for comfort. If we separate, we’re in danger of getting surrounded.”

“Yeah,” Felix said, kneeling down behind a rusted car. It was missing a door. One glance told him it wasn’t even worth searching through. “Grocery store looks pretty safe.”

Dimitri nodded. “Slow. Look at where you’re stepping. If we kick something by accident, it’s bound to get some unwanted attention.”

The grocery store was just as abandoned as the rest of the town. Less walkers lurked around there, attention otherwise on whatever sounds the wind provoked elsewhere. Only a few shuffled near it, and Felix took them out as quickly and quietly as he could, wincing when some blood spattered on his face. It made his skin crawl, and he couldn’t resist using the back of his hand to wipe at it, knowing it would only smudge it and make it worse. Dimitri stilled for a moment after one of the walkers nudged an empty glass bottle as he took it down, sending it rolling to the other side of the road. Felix held his breath. They watched through the cracked window of another car as a few walkers looked over momentarily to where the noise came from, before becoming once again captivated by how doors swung in the wind.

“Good going," Felix snapped quietly.

Sheepishly, too sheepish for almost getting them killed, Dimitri whispered back, “Sorry.”

The grocery store had two walker bodies inside. One belonged to a security guard, a screwdriver sticking out of its skull, and the other to the cashier, slumped over the counter with some of the wall behind it crumbled and collapsing rubble onto its legs. Blood still dripped from the crater at its head, a crack splitting it. Felix’s grip on his machete tightened. It must have been recent. There was a chance they weren’t alone. He shouldered Dimitri lightly, pointing. His expression turned grim as he came to the same conclusion Felix had.

“Check it’s clear first,” Felix told him, and Dimitri answered by heading down the left aisle, leaving Felix with going down the right.

The shelves, funnily enough, weren’t as empty as Felix expected them to be. As he ventured carefully down the tile floor, he plucked six tins of tuna, faltering for a moment as he remembered Dimitri’s hatred for tuna, before deciding he didn’t care and would kill him if he were forced to stomach nothing but baked beans again tonight. He held the tins to his chest, peering down the aisles to check for walkers or otherwise. He was met with none. He reached the end of the store and then clicked his tongue twice. _All good._

A few beats later, he heard Dimitri mimic the same. _Here, too._ So Felix unzipped his rucksack and shoved the tins of tuna in. He trailed down the rest of the rows of shelves, grabbing two bags of pasta (maybe they could find something to cook it in elsewhere), two packs of cranberry juice boxes, and some canned peaches. It was all he could really carry without worrying something might crack or burst with the rest of his shit, so he crossed the store to the other side.

“What’d you find?” he asked once he approached Dimitri.

Dimitri tried to play off his slight jolt of surprise by rolling his shoulder back. “Two tubs of peanut butter, some rice, and canned soup. Last two bottles of water, too.”

Felix groaned. “It’s gonna be a waste of space to carry some of this shit around if we don’t find something to properly cook it.”

“Mm… There might be a camping supplies store here, too, considering there’s a campsite not so far away.” Dimitri reorganised his own bag, frowning. “I think our priority is hitting a pharmacy next, though. I’d rather wait a while longer looking for some sort of pot to cook pasta in than be in need of extra bandages and have nothing at hand.”

Leading to the exit again, Felix said, “I saw one across the street. There’s some dead hanging around there, but if we chuck something in the opposite direction, they might fuck off and give us a clear way in.”

If Dimitri was against his plan, he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like they had any better options. Once they checked they were safe to sneak out of the grocery store, Felix looked over at the pharmacy over the hood of a car. One of his brows raised in confusion. When they had filed into the grocery store, there had been at least a group of ten walkers outside the pharmacy. Now, there was only one.

“What the…?”

Dimitri leaned forward to look at where Felix’s eyes were fixed. “Huh. Strange…”

Unwilling to waste time questioning just how a sizable group of walkers had managed to shift from one place to the next so quickly, the pair of them crept across the street to the pharmacy. One of its windows was still intact, though not without a large diagonal crack across its middle. The other one was shattered and had fallen apart, with only some sharp shards remaining in the frame. The one leftover walker there stood idly with its back to them, letting Felix swing his machete through its head with one, clean motion. Dimitri caught its falling body with his lance, and eased it slowly to the pavement, unwilling to cause enough noise to summon more walkers to the area. The pharmacy store wasn’t secure enough for them to hide out in if they were forced to stay inside.

Felix smacked Dimitri’s hovering hand away from the handle of the door, pointing up to the bell on the other side that would likely ring if they opened it. Dimitri’s lips twisted, and he gestured for Felix to step through the open window first.

Three more walker bodies were draped across the store floor. Again, the pair of them split off to check the store was empty besides them, and Felix’s eyes skimmed the names of some few painkillers left for him to grab. He balanced three boxes of them in one arm, and reached with caution for some bandages on a higher shelf. He scanned the rest of the shelves, brows furrowed as he failed to find any band-aids. At least he managed to snag a few more pads and tampons. Maybe Dimitri had better luck. He doubled back from one aisle and returned to the one he was walking down to begin with, all the way down the store. The neighbouring aisles were practically empty and held nothing Felix found use for.

He faltered before turning the corner to the final aisle. He strained his ears, just in case he had misheard but—the shuffle of feet, low, hard to catch… mutterings... Could walkers mutter? He crouched, carefully placing the boxes onto the floor, and leaned forward. The lighting back here was weaker, and left more shadows, but Felix could tell that the dark outline at the end of the aisle was a figure. Whether it was human or not, he felt unsure. But, then again, it could explain the sudden absence of the rest of the walkers out front; maybe this one strayed away and into here, fascinated by the minute flickering of the broken light above that didn’t shine enough light to help Felix with confirming any hypothesis.

Slowly, Felix rose, machete at the ready as he tried to step toward the figure as silently as he could, afraid that his own breathing might give him away. One step, two step, three—the figure hardly moved, but its head was hung, as though looking down at something—four step, five step, six—whatever it was, it was taller than Felix, but did that also mean potentially stronger?—seven step, eight step, nine—a stray box of band-aids got kicked hard enough by Felix’s booted toe, making it hit the shelves.

The figure turned, Felix swore and he readied his machete.

Then— _l_ _ips._ Against _his._

Felix froze, brain shutting down before desperately rebooting again. Something fisted his jacket—hands?—and Felix tried to figure out what was happening. The lips felt warm, a little chapped, but alive and _human._ Felix had touched Glenn’s rotting body, held it tight, felt it change from the flushed skin of the living to the cold, decaying of the dead. He knew the difference better than anyone. That was the first realisation Felix experienced. The second had been that he was being _kissed_ for the first time in his life. His heart picked up a pace, from fear or flusteredness, he wasn’t sure, but his cheeks were suddenly hot, and he knew that _that_ wasn’t something that happened when he was scared.

Regaining some sense, Felix pushed hard against the figure. They separated, Felix stumbling back one way, and the stranger the other. He was panting. It was embarrassing, and he held onto the shelf beside him for support.

“Sorry! Sorry, it’s just—I haven’t seen someone human in—in _so_ long, and—” The voice was borderline hysterical as they laughed a low laugh, more air than mirth. Then they stopped, inhaling sharply. “Is— _Glenn?!”_

Did—did they say _Glenn?_

Felix backed away, feeling as his back hit a wall, where the afternoon sun managed to seep through the cracked window at the other end of the store. It lit Felix’s face up, and he squinted from it as the stranger stepped forward, just to the threshold of the dividing line of sunlight and darkness.

They swore. “Jesus— _Felix!”_

They stepped forward again, just once, and Felix saw a perfect Roman nose, freckled skin and brown eyes that he so often saw swallowed up by his cheeks whenever he laughed or smiled. They were rounded now in shock, lips—lips that Felix had just _kissed—_ agape. His ginger hair was slightly longer now, the fringe obscuring his right eye.

“Syl—Sylvain…?” Felix managed. Then his face sobered, and his shoulders squared. He raised his hand and balled it into a fist, punching Sylvain’s shoulder. “Are you fucking _crazy?!_ I almost killed you!”

Snapping out of his daze, Sylvain’s eyes found the machete Felix was still holding. “Oh. Oh, shit,” he laughed, same hysterics creeping back in, “shit, trust _you_ of all people to turn up with a machete in a zombie apocalypse!”

Irritated, Felix hissed, “What the fuck is that meant to mean?!”

Sylvain laughed some more. If the idiot wouldn’t calm down, they would be found out. “ _Wow._ Just—it’s very… you.”

“And you laughing your ass off and probably attracting half the dead town is very you, too,” Felix spat back, and Sylvain hiccuped, then stilled.

“Right. Shutting up now. Shit, I just—you’re alive!”

“You sound surprised.”

Sylvain waved him off. “It’s the shock. I really haven’t seen anyone in… Hell, I don’t even know. Where’s your brother?”

Felix’s shoulders tensed, and before he could barrel over his next rushed words, Dimitri’s voice rang out from the other side of the store. “Felix? Are you alright?”

Looking back to where his voice came from, he asked Felix, “Who’s that? That doesn’t sound like Glenn. Or your dad. Who—”

Dimitri, evidently concerned at the lack of a response, had made his way over, nearly tripping over the supplies Felix had set down on the floor earlier. “My god—Sylvain?!” He slowly lowered his lance in disbelief.

The three of them stood in an odd triangle, with Sylvain looking between Felix and Dimitri, and Dimitri and Felix looking at Sylvain. For a moment, there was a silence, and then Sylvain’s laughter ringing again as he shook with each breathless _ha!_

“Dimitri! Holy fucking shit! You’re here, too? This is—come here!” Sylvain opened his arms out for Dimitri, who awkwardly fumbled to hug Sylvain back without stabbing him with his lance. “I haven’t seen you both since before I set off for college! That was like, what? Two years ago?”

“Maybe even longer with, well…” Dimitri gestured vaguely.

Sylvain grinned, leaning against the wall as he looked the pair of them up and down. “With the zombie apocalypse that no one expected nor can explain that suddenly wiped out probably about half of Fódlan?”

Blinking, Dimitri said, “Yes, I—I guess that’s one way to put it.”

With a nod, Sylvain’s grin widened. “Christ. Dimitri, you’ve grown! You used to be shorter than me. Can’t say the same for Felix. Have you even gained an inch?”

Before Felix could argue, Dimitri flushed and stammered out, “Oh, uh, I—I started my testosterone shots not too long after you left for college.”

“That must be it! Happy for you, man.” He thumped Dimitri’s shoulder. There was slight irony behind those words now. What was there to be happy about anymore?

Irritated with how the conversation just seemed to keep going, Felix cut Dimitri off before he could say anything else, teeth gritted. “I think you both forget what kind of world we all live in.”

Dimitri straightened his back. “Oh! Yes, yes, you’re right. We were just gathering supplies. I assume you were doing the same?”

Sylvain lugged off his rucksack from his back and zipped it open to show them both its contents. Boxes of medication and bottles of water along with cans of food were there, likely taken from the same shelves Felix and Dimitri had raided not ten minutes earlier. “You caught me. I was just trying to read the back of some watered down morphine shit I found before Felix decided to piss himself in fear at the sight of me.”

“Me?!” Felix glowered. “You’re the one who threw yourself at me like some madman!”

Mock-wounded, Sylvain whined, “Well, can you blame me?! Like I said, haven’t seen a soul in a hot second.”

“Were you with someone else when this broke out?” Dimitri asked, intrigued. “Someone we know?”

At that, Sylvain’s hand twitched as he zipped up his rucksack again. “Nah. Just a few people here and there. I group-jumped for a while, but they weren’t going in the direction I wanted to head off to.”

He was lying. Felix remembered enough of him and his mannerisms to know that. But this wasn’t the time nor the place to push. Dimitri must have thought similar. “Where’s that?”

Doubling back to grab whatever he was looking through before Felix found him, Sylvain said. “You guys remembered that forest we camped at every summer?”

Bending down to grab the boxes Felix had left on the floor, Dimitri’s eyes widened the slightest bit. “The Sealed Forest? That’s—”

“All the way beyond Garreg Mach? I know.”

“It sounds ambitious… Why there, if I may ask?”

Sylvain opened his mouth. “Well—”

“My god, can we _please_ have this conversation somewhere that won’t leave us swarmed by stupid zombies or do you both have some sort of death wish?” Felix finally broke. The sun was setting again. They would have to get out of town while the light was still out. Felix wasn't willing to break out the flashlights out again, not when they could have a much better use in the future instead of scavenging for a place to sleep the night off because two idiots decided to waste time as if they were catching up in a coffee shop and not a run-down pharmacy in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

Shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other, Sylvain laughed again, although this time it seemed a little more forced. “Alright, alright. C’mon, I sought out this hostel nearby. It seemed pretty safe to me. With all of us taking shifts to sleep and keep up watch, it should be a breeze.”

“Oh, excellent! It’ll just take sneaking around to it without being sniffed out.” Dimitri seemed to relax slightly at the promise of somewhere to stay the night, and something that wasn’t that god-awful tent for once. He and Sylvain fell into step together, and for a moment, Felix watched them go, the dying sun in his eyes again.

Some would call reuniting with an old childhood friend a blessing in the midst of such chaos. Felix wasn’t sure if such things ever existed, since whoever could have blessed them had also cursed them with the rise of the dead. He wouldn’t exactly call Sylvain a blessing either, if he were anything like how he was before he left for college. Judging by the… Well, the _encounter_ Felix shared with him, it seemed like not much had changed.

“Fe!” came Sylvain’s whispered yell. He and Dimitri stood by the cracked window. Stupid assholes would get caught if they weren’t more careful. “You coming or what?”

Felix huffed in indignance. If anyone was going to make sure they weren’t going to get eaten alive, it would be him of all people. If not him, then Ingrid, but she wasn’t here. He just whisper-snarled back, “Don’t call me that.” He joined them anyway, swatting at them for standing in such an open spot.


	2. CHAPTER TWO: AZURE MOON.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s not every day you see your old friend from childhood suddenly kill a zombie since the last time all three of you were together was to send you off to college.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER TWO!!! thank u once again to sammy for editing <3333
> 
> also thank u sm on all the hits and kudos on the last chapter as well as all the sweet comments!!! they were all so encouraging and i hope this fic continues to deliver!!
> 
> again, same sort of warnings apply as well as a brief mention of vomit! so be careful reading! im unsure about when the next chapter will be up since im somewhat busy this upcoming week but until then, enjoy!!!

The hostel was just as run-down as Conand Town was, but at least there had been a gate for cars that kept the walkers out. Sylvain had amicably led Dimitri and Felix to it, the three of them weaving in and out of the dead and flashing their weapons whenever the need arose. He had whistled lowly in appreciation as Dimitri managed to take down two walkers with a single throw of his lance, the point flying through one rotted skull and then the next. Felix ran over to sever their arms, boot pushing his bodyweight down onto one of their chests to keep them both grounded. It was impressive to say the least, but also not surprising; Felix had fenced religiously and Dimitri had inherited the same fascination for old war weapons that his father had, having tried them out on dummies placed before him. But now that there was a real reason for them to fight and show off their skills, and hard work, their hands calloused with effort? Excuse Sylvain for standing back in awe momentarily, only just realising a walker struggling over towards him.

Some sick reunion this was.

They had taken some time passing through Conand Town to the direction of the hostel, and the grey of the sky gave in for the bloodshed of dusk. For the most part, they managed to sneak through alleys and climb buildings to roof-jump for faster travel. But once they had run out of structures strong enough to permit their weights, they had to drop back to abandoned concrete, facing more walkers as they followed a road to where cars would usually drive to the hostel. Not so many of the dead lurked in open, sparse stretches of land, but with the shift in temperature and absence of natural light, more of them seemed to appear as though from nowhere. No one laughed when Sylvain joked it was like they were spawning in as though in some of the video games they used to play as kids. Tough crowd.

Or, rather, a _hopeless_ crowd. But were Dimitri and Felix really hopeless? Compared to what he had seen before, he wouldn’t say so. Sylvain didn’t exactly lie about group-jumping, although he did that _before_ he was left alone. He had met people who had eyes almost as dim as the dead’s, some hesitating before a walker would struggle for them, as though considering giving up on the spot. Some had. Often Sylvain had trouble distinguishing which part was worse—the cries when teeth sank into flesh and fingers held onto bone with a deathgrip, or the helplessness that was knowing he could do nothing but let someone put them out of their misery before they could join the undead-dead army that was stronger than the living. He couldn’t tell how optimistic he was himself about the reality at hand, but he thought there were better ways to end his misery than letting the decaying get their way. He didn’t have a list of alternatives at hand, which must have meant he had something akin to hope that he still clinged onto. How long did he have before that would change? Better yet, would he ever be greeted with a void for a chest and weakened will before he would be greeted with the handshake from Death?

Sylvain figured that was up to fate to decide. Not that it had exactly been in his favour in all his years. So, maybe things looked grim.

But for now, Sylvain readied his butcher’s knife, then kicked the walker in the abdomen, watching as it hit the brick wall behind it. Without hesitating, he swung his knife and a chunk of rot shot out at the split of its skull, painting Sylvain’s front with fresh blood. He always closed his eyes at this part. He’d been told off too many times before for letting some blood fly into his eye, and he thought it would dishonour a solid memory if he let it happen again, as silly as it was. Plus, that shit stung. The walker whinged at the impact of the blade, and Sylvain grunted as he used his strength to pull and raise the knife again, striking harder than he had the first time. When it stopped moving, he pulled his butcher’s knife out again, ignoring how its head lolled to the side as he did. He sighed, trying to shake off some of the blood from the blade before looking back at Dimitri and Felix, who were staring with their own clothes splattered handsomely with blood and guts.

It’s not every day you see your old friend from childhood suddenly kill a zombie since the last time all three of you were together was to send you off to college. God, Sylvain would give anything to go back to that moment, as painful as it had been. Anything was better than this, even economics lectures that he would love to nap in now to rest his sore muscles and heavy feet. Sylvain wouldn’t even complain about being stuck in that fucking well again if it meant no more dead walking the streets like it didn’t go against the most basic law of nature.

Ceremoniously, Sylvain gestured to the dented, tall gate with the hostel sitting behind it in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Tada!”

Dimitri cracked a wry, exhausted smile and Felix scoffed.

“Have you stayed here before?” Dimitri asked as Sylvain struggled with the rusty lock.

“Nah, but I checked it out on my way to Conand Town. Hopefully we can steal a pot or something to cook some stuff in.” He looked over his shoulder at him, grinning. “I know some of these places supply those in the kitchen cabinets or some shit. I would give up a limb for some pasta.” He groaned when the lock wouldn’t budge, and Felix sighed, pushing past him to give it a go himself.

Dimitri nodded, though looked around to check for any surprise walkers that could perhaps hold Sylvain to that sort of statement. “Where have you come from, then?”

Sylvain scraped the tip of the butcher’s knife along the brick. It crumbled slightly as he did, making his hair rise on the back of his neck ever so slightly at the noise. “I was in Fhirdiad when all hell broke loose. Managed to make it out with some guys, though. I helped them break into and kickstart a car, so they let me drive with them. Got dropped off at the edge of Blaidydd and I considered looking for you, but I figured you’re smarter than staying somewhere so close to central so I didn’t.” Sylvain shrugged. The gate opened with a whine, and he looked at Felix, impressed. “Nice.”

“You were pulling it the wrong way, idiot,” Felix only quipped back, walking through as the gate parted.

Dimitri ushered Sylvain after him, and followed. “I suppose you probably made it to Blaidydd faster than we did. We were also in Fhirdiad when it started, but we had no car.”

“No way, did you guys _walk?”_

Shutting the gate behind them, Dimitri nodded. “It took us a while, but we were perhaps better off than others in such a situation. We had some things to defend ourselves with at hand thanks to, uh... Well, my father’s weapon collection.” He said _father_ carefully, as if it hurt. Sylvain didn’t have to do much to put two and two together when it came to Lambert’s fate. Nor Rodrigue and Glenn’s, judging by the way Felix didn’t say much on the matter. “We packed all the food and water we could, understanding there wasn’t much hope staying in the capital if we wished to survive.”

“You were probably at your father’s Fhirdiad house,” Sylvain guessed. He recalled the mahogany wood floors and sleek, wallpapered walls, and handsome spiral staircases that led to the upper levels, and then another one to the back of the house that held the way for the basement. It hid away an antique collection of war weapons that Lambert had shown Dimitri and his friends when they were still young, permitting them to try and hold the less fragile jewels in his possession. “Was Felix with you? You guys were probably preparing for college yourselves when—” 

“Shut up,” Felix bit through the conversation irritably. “We have to check the place is clear before we waltz in and call it a day, and your incessant chattering isn’t doing us any good.”

Dimitri sighed. “Right as ever. Should we try splitting off alone and checking the rooms? I doubt many of them would be able to hide in there.”

“Sure thing,” Sylvain rolled his shoulders back with a grin. “I’ll take the block up front, and you guys try the ones on the right?”

Felix said nothing, but did just as Sylvain suggested, making his way slowly to investigate the washed out buildings there. Both Sylvain and Dimitri watched as he went. “I’m sorry about him.” He sounded sincere but also… guilty.

Sylvain screwed his face up in confusion. “What? No, don’t worry about it. I don’t blame him for being so snappy, it’s getting late and you both look exhausted. As soon as we make sure this place is absolutely safe, we’ll cook something up and I’ll take the first shift.” He patted Dimitri’s shoulder in comfort.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly—” Dimitri began to object, and then sighed. “I would… greatly appreciate that. And I know Felix would, too. Thank you, Sylvain.”

He waved him off, that same boyish smile he had practiced to perfection replacing the concern. “As gracious as ever, huh? Don’t sweat it. If something jumps out at you, yell. We got a deal?”

Already moving to catch up with Felix, Dimitri offered Sylvain a quick, weak smile. “Deal. Same applies to you.” Once Sylvain flashed him a quick thumbs-up, Dimitri readied his lance and approached one of the bottom floor doors.

Sylvain himself pivoted round to face his own assigned block. The gravel crunched under his boots and he let his gaze skim their new surroundings. The sign that had declared _CONAND HOSTEL_ leaned unevenly, thanks to the car that had evidently rammed itself into it, the driver and passenger seats left wide open as its owners likely fled. Otherwise, the hostel and its carpark just looked barren, with nothing but the clouds bleaching the orange sky above it as the day neared its turn to night. Sylvain would have appreciated how pretty the sight was if he weren’t also checking for dead people that might kill him. He almost missed scrolling through his Instagram feed and watching people from his classes post the same damn sky with some fake-deep inspirational quote. Almost. Gotta say, he didn’t feel very #Inspired, pretty sky or not. Especially not with how the closer he walked to the block opposite him, Sylvain saw how some dried blood, somewhat washed away by the rain at some point though not entirely, stained the gravel leading up to one of the ajar doors of the building. He reached for the knife again when he moved in.

He gave himself a count of three, and shouldered the door open. It was near silent as it gave way for Sylvain’s entry, his boots against the carpet less audible than the squeal of hinges. He walked in slowly, the butcher’s knife raised as he followed the trail of blood. It looked as though whatever had bled in (or out of?) here had gotten hit badly. Chances were, it was a walker. If it had been a human person, they would be long dead. Well, the undead-dead kind. Sylvain peered around the corner of the wall. The room was dark, with how the sun had almost entirely set and the east window was covered by a blind. A lousy sofa which probably also doubled as a bed was there, along with a rickety coffee table.

The walker was half hanging out of the west window, half inside the room, with its torso held down by the window’s weight. It had a duffle bag beside it, unzipped. Sylvain would have been more enthusiastic about it if the walker’s hair didn’t seem blonde, with how pale it looked in contrast to the rest of the shadowed room. His hands, without much warning, suddenly seemed clammier, but he tightened his grip on his butcher’s knife despite it, flinching when the walker gave a sudden groan and stirred. Sylvain wasn’t sure if he had hoped for it to be dead-dead or not. Sylvain swallowed, watching as the walker tried to claw at him through the window. He couldn’t see its face properly. But he had to kill it. More importantly, he had to make sure.

In three strides, he was by the window, ignoring how its legs twitched beside him. Sylvain shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed the window up quickly. The walker took a second to realise it was freed, but a second too late, because Sylvain’s knife impacted sickly with its skull. Blood blossomed, staining its pale hair red. It gasped and heaved, and when it stopped, Sylvain shuddered. Then, he threw up out of the same window it had hung out of. He wiped his mouth with the back of his jacket arm, hand trembling when he carefully grabbed the walker by the neck of its coat, dragging it over to the window covered by the blind. He pulled it up, and what little light from the sun remained pooled into the room.

He let it wash over him, and he took a shaky breath before raising the walker to the window.

He dropped it, and it hit the carpet.

Not Ingrid.

Sylvain leaned back against the peeled wallpaper, shut his eyes and sighed, long and mournful. He should have felt relieved, but he didn’t. It wasn’t Ingrid. That must have been a good thing, right? It might mean she could have survived, and Sylvain just keeps missing her. But it could also mean that he found the wrong walker.

He opened his eyes.

The walker’s right leg was practically devoured. Sylvain’s best guess was that it had been caught in a scuffle with some dead while they were still human and managed to drag themself into one of the hostel rooms. There had been a bread knife laying beside the walker by the window, which probably meant the person considered ending it before they could turn, only to back out and trap themself in the window so that their shell wouldn’t go out and find some more living to chew on. Smart, Sylvain had to admit, but also sad. He wondered how long ago that had been, how long this person suffered for before missing out on death entirely, forced into rotting until someone—Sylvain—stepped in.

Sylvain’s lips formed a thin line. He grabbed hold of the walker and sat it in between the wall and sofa, back straight and head hanging.

“Let’s see what you have here, huh?” His voice came out rougher than he had anticipated, but he doubted the walker minded much. He hauled the duffle bag onto the sofa and rummaged for his flashlight. He switched it on and shoved the end into his mouth, digging through the belongings there. Water, a few cans of food they could all break out tonight, some pads and tampons (thank _god,_ because Sylvain was running short and would hate to bug either Dimitri or Felix for some, assuming they didn’t have much they would willingly spare themselves), another flashlight, change of clothes…

Sylvain picked up the folded over paper, removing his flashlight from his mouth as he shone some light onto the photo. Two women and a little boy were pictured, all smiling. One woman had strawberry blonde hair, a broad smile and tanned skin, holding the boy in her arms as she kissed the other women’s cheek. She had dark hair, maybe dyed some sort of navy or dark purple, and she herself smiled in her own way, raising the boy’s hand in a wave. The boy was darker than the both of them, with black curls and a laugh memorised in the photo. Sylvain swallowed. The back had writing on it, ink smudged. He could only just make out some letters in hasty block print text, and a date that was just as illegible:

**_CAT , S_ _MIR + CY_**

**_AD TION AY_ **

  
  


They looked married. Happy. Like they had a whole life in front of them. Sylvain’s gut wretched. He looked back at the walker.

“Your son is beautiful,” he told her. Her. Not it. “And you and your wife look… really happy. I hope it wasn’t too short-lived.”

He took a moment longer, trying to figure out if he should say _sorry._ He didn’t. Instead, Sylvain folded the photo back in half and hid it away in one of his pockets. He grabbed the duffle bag and hoisted it onto one shoulder, walking slowly back over to the door.

“I’ll find them for you. They’ll know you’re in a better place now. I promise.”

The woman didn’t respond. Sylvain didn’t expect her to.

Going through the rest of the rooms was a breeze. Nothing else had been present in the hostel besides him, Felix and Dimitri. They had gathered wood from the forest beside them and bunched it up in the centre of the car park, and Dimitri grabbed some chairs from some of the rooms to sit around the fire Felix started. Nothing too big, lest they attract any sort of attention, but enough to keep them warm and cook something over the flame. The wind was weaker than it had been the night before, making Sylvain worry less about the fire going out without warning.

Felix offered Sylvain a pot. “Found it in one of the kitchens.” He really did look like Glenn. His hair was longer—longer than it had been when they were younger, now down to his shoulder blades—and the way he held himself was almost identical to his brother. Only thing was, Glenn smiled a lot, and he had his father’s eyes. Sylvain hadn’t seen even an inkling of a smile from Felix, and he knew his eyes had been stolen from his mother, long dead before the world turned upside down. He remembered the shock, fear and disgust on Felix’s face when Sylvain had mistaken him for his brother. How fresh was that wound still?

Sylvain accepted it, as if he weren’t thinking all those thoughts. “Why are you giving it to me?”

With a shrug, Felix said, “The boar would probably find some way to melt it. And I’m not hungry. I’m going to sleep. Wake me up for my shift later.”

He walked away again and off to one of the ground floor rooms. Sylvain made sure neither he nor Dimitri would approach the one with the woman, making up some sort of explanation that no one cared enough to question. Sylvain watched him go, noting how Dimitri didn’t, eyes fixed on the flame that shivered in the wind.

“Boar?” Sylvain asked as he began to fill the pot with some of the water from one of the bottles belonging to the duffle bag. When asked about it, he had told them it was left alone in one of the rooms as if someone had left it behind in a hurry. Again, no one questioned it.

Dimitri’s face was grim. “He means me.”

Sylvain nodded, and waited for Dimitri to elaborate. He didn’t. Sylvain nodded again, deciding tonight wasn’t the time for pressing questions and interrogations. They could pick that up in the morning. “Cool. Pasta or rice today?”

A half shrug. “Whatever you want.”

Pasta. Sylvain wanted pasta. He opened one of the packs of it. God, if he had to, he would eat it raw. The water in the pot was slowly bubbling, and the pasta drowned in it when Sylvain tipped some in carefully.

“Wish we had some sauce to go with it. I make killer pasta,” Sylvain told him, searching for something in his bag to stir the pasta around with. “Kinda have to. Used to be a college student. We lived off this shit more than anything.”

Dimitri hummed. “Economics, right? That’s what you went to study.”

“Yeah.” Sylvain found an old plastic spoon, part of it cracked. Good enough for him. “Hated it, though. Part of the reason I dropped out.”

At that, Dimitri’s eyes widened. “You dropped out?!”

Sylvain laughed slightly. “Well, it’s not like it matters now, does it? I don’t exactly think me putting my hands up in the middle of a mob of dead guys saying _don’t eat me, I have an economics degree!_ would make them go _oh, our bad, sorry man, we’re just crabby because the stocks in hell are shit, mind lending a hand? ”_

A small smile twisted itself on Dimitri’s face. “I suppose not…”

Stirring still, Sylvain said a little wistfully, “Kinda wish I pursued literature. Or theatre. But a Gautier’s a Gautier. Not that _that_ matters anymore, either.”

There was a silence, nothing but the sound of the cooking pasta, and the scrape of the plastic spoon against metal, and the crack of fire. “Your parents,” Dimitri said carefully, voice quieter than before. “Are they…?”

Sylvain didn’t think about it a lot, if he could help it. “Gone. I assume, anyway. I hardly went home in between semesters, and not at all once I dropped out. I got disowned. Obviously.”

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said, and he cringed. “That… likely means nothing by now.”

“Not a thing, but I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless."

Dimitri hummed, looking back at the fire. Another pause. Then: “And… your brother?”

Miklan… Sylvain kept his face neutral, though his muscles tensed. “Last time I saw him, the police were taking him into custody. And that was still in high school. Conand Tower Prison.”

A sigh, yet not a sigh. Something heavier. “If we’re aiming for the Sealed Forest—”

Sylvain tore his eyes away from the pasta. “You— _we?”_

Dimitri’s face glowed in the midst of the flame licks. “You didn’t honestly think we would go separate ways, did you?”

“I…” Sylvain’s tongue wet his lips. They were cracked. “I wasn’t sure. I thought you guys were doing well, wouldn’t need someone else around but… Hell, if you want me to tag along, I won’t stop you. I’m not _that_ stupid.”

He figured the pasta was ready enough, and Sylvain used the lid to drain the water to the side while making sure none of the food would slip past. Dimitri watched. Sylvain set down the pot on the chair where Felix would’ve sat.

“Help yourself. Just gotta make sure there’s some left for the Sleeping Beauty otherwise walkers will be the last of our problems.” Sylvain used the plastic spoon to shovel some pasta into his mouth. He melted when he tasted it. Sure, it was raw pasta, no sauce, no seasoning, no nothing. But _fuck,_ did it taste good. Dimitri must have shared the same sentiments, because he sighed through his nose once he had his own mouthful, aided in by a pocket knife he had hastily wiped against his pants before stabbing some pasta.

They ate in silence, and while usually Sylvain despised the sound of others eating right beside him, he decided he was too thankful for the plain pot before him to care. He ached for more when he made himself stop, sure to leave a third behind, but he knew he couldn’t afford to make some more. Who the fuck knew the next time they would get enough luck to stuff their bags with more grub? Was today even lucky? Sylvain looked at Dimitri, who himself was coming up to finishing his last mouthful. He looked so much older, older than he really was with how the eyebags pulled at his eyes, and how pale he was. He thought about Felix, guarded, stiff and built for a blade in his hand. He couldn’t solve any of their problems, nor could they solve any of his, but he figured they had a way to go still. He hoped so.

“I think I’ll get some rest now. Assuming your offer is still—”

Sylvain placed the lid on the pot, waving Dimitri off with his hands. “Go, I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

Dimitri rose from the chair, meek. “Thank you, again. Please don’t hesitate to switch places once you get too tired.” Sylvain stretched himself out in the chair, sighing as he felt his joints pop. “Although…” Dimitri had faltered in his step.

Sylvain tipped his head back, just catching him in his vision. “Hm?”

“Why the Sealed Forest? If I may ask.”

Why the Sealed Forest?

He had cut Ingrid’s hair short. She had asked him to, which was surprising, but Sylvain supposed if a zombie apocalypse was suddenly in action, then Sylvain could be trusted with cutting her hair. She said she didn’t want any walkers catching it with their hands, pulling her down with them. He thought it was sensible. She was like that, even as kids. The most sensible, despite Sylvain being almost three years her senior. But it was his idea, to go to the Sealed Forest if they ever separated.

Sylvain shrugged. “Who knows that place better than we do?”

His answer must have been satisfying enough. That, or Dimitri was too tired to keep much of a conversation going again. “I see. Goodnight, Sylvain.”

“‘Night, Your Highness,” Sylvain teased, and he heard Dimitri grumble in a flustered sort of way. Oh, to be children again, playing knights and kings. Oh, to live in a world where your brains weren’t the finest meal in all the land. Oh, oh, oh.

He heard a door shut quietly from behind him. Sylvain sat in front of the fire for a few moments long, just how long, he wasn’t sure. Dimitri had mentioned seeing a shovel in the office, along with some other things that could have been of use, but they were selective with it, even if they had an extra bag now. Sylvain did a round of the car park, shone his flashlight at the concrete and soil and trees beyond the fence. When he decided it was safe, he fetched the shovel.

He dug for a while, and would have whistled, too, if he didn’t fear the noise carrying in the wind. There was a small patch of grass in between the rooms. He hoped it was big enough, but he didn’t mind spending some extra time digging at the top to make the fit easier. He leaned the shovel against the fence and then walked back to the room from before, boots scraping gravel with each step.

The woman was in the same position as she had been earlier. She had no reason to not be. Sylvain took a gulp of air and swallowed it, before lifting her body. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but it felt… sad that she was so light. Well, she was missing a leg. Maybe that was part of the reason why. And she must have bled out almost entirely. She was just bone and rot.

The fit was perfect.

Sylvain’s hand hovered over the shovel, hesitating. He unfolded the photo again. The resemblance was there. Her hair was longer, though. Put up in a small tuft of a ponytail, now. He almost placed it in with her, and would have positioned her cold hands over it. Instead, he tucked it back into his pocket.

“It’s a nice picture,” he whispered. “I bet your family would like to see it again.”

He picked the shovel up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! be sure to leave kudos and comments <333


	3. CHAPTER THREE: AZURE MOON.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sleep was peace. Sleep was innocence, and refuge and sanctuary. So maybe it was not sleep that Dimitri feared, but something else entirely, because what he did every night when it was his turn to lay down was trap himself in his own mind. Dimitri didn’t sleep. He was tortured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello sorry for the uhhh (checks watch) twelve day interlude i had a Lot going on with uni prep and just general existing and then writer's block yada yada yada . BUT here is the next chapter and thank u once again to sammy for editing it :D
> 
> i would like you all to know that i struggled with the start of this chapter since dimitri's pov is something that i like to handle carefully, and it took me until yesterday when i was hit by some good old depression for me to get in the right mindset for it. mentally ill ppl writing mentally ill ppl <3
> 
> anyway!! i don't think there's much for me to flag up for triggers this time?? maybe hallucinations, but if there's anything else someone might find best disclaiming here do let me know in the comments!!
> 
> once again thank u sm for the support on this fic :DDD i really appreciate every kudos and comment they make me giddy <3 ALSO THANK U FOR 300+ HITS THATS KINDA SEXY!!! anyway im done for now until next time sorry dimitri <3

The curtains of the hostel room were frayed and moth-eaten. Dimitri stared at them as he feared sleep. They were open, hanging from either side of the window that looked out onto the car park and the faint fire that Felix had lit some time ago, how long ago exactly Dimitri didn’t know. The curtains were frayed, and moth-eaten, and Dimitri stared, stared and feared sleep, and closed then opened his fist. What was sleep?

Sleep was peace. Sleep was innocence, and refuge and sanctuary. So maybe it was not sleep that Dimitri feared, but something else entirely, because what he did every night when it was his turn to lay down was trap himself in his own mind. Dimitri didn’t sleep. He was tortured.

He closed and opened his fist.

Eventually, he would pass out. He was already exhausted, his body heavy and drained, aching in some places, but his mind was making him run around in circles, keeping him awake when the rest of him begged for rest. Eventually he would pass out, and that thought terrified him. He curled his hand into a fist again. He squeezed tightly until he felt an ache develop there, too. He relaxed it.

Sylvain had joined him and Felix. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. He tried hard to keep himself in control as they had travelled from Conand Town to the hostel, not willing to let vengeance unleash itself, not allowing the ghosts in the corner of his vision spur him on. It was hard, and he knew that far sooner than later he would snap again. Lambert smiled at that. It was a corpse’s smile.

The tiles of the kitchen were warm beneath socked feet, and Dimitri poured champagne. Felix asked something about cheese. Is cheese meant to be combined with wine or champagne? I’ll ask Glenn. He went to ask Glenn. Dimitri’s fist opened and closed. The window was open. The air was fresh. The garden at the Fhirdiad house wasn’t as nice as the one at the Blaiddyd house. Felix came back. Champagne is a sparkling wine. Glenn is annoying. Cheese works fine. Dimitri poured the champagne and pointed out the cheese, and the knife, and the chopping board for Felix. Felix chopped. Dimitri poured, closed his fist and opened it.

Something moved in the garden. It could have been a squirrel. Dimitri knew it wasn’t. Lambert laughed. So did Rodrigue. Glenn smirked. Felix told him to sit down. Dimitri did not sit down. You will die, he said. He pointed at Lambert. You will die, he said. He pointed at Glenn. You will die, he said. He pointed at Rodrigue. You will want me dead, he said. He pointed at Felix. The shadow at the corner of the patio was not a maid. It was not a butler. It was not a squirrel. They are here, Dimitri said.

Lambert stood, shook hands with the shadow, and wept. Dimitri opened his fist. Someone laughed. Maybe it had been him. He closed his fist. An arm at his shoulder. Another. Dimitri did not move. A pull, hard, frantic, pleading. Dimitri did not move. Opened his fist. Dima! Dima, you will die!

No, I won’t.

He closed his fist.

He moved.

Light burned.

“Dimitri!”

He bolted upright, sweating hard, breathing harder.

Sylvain’s eyes were wide, hands at his shoulders, evidently shaking him awake. Dimitri blinked up at him.

“Sylvain? Is something wrong?” Dimitri’s voice was rough, and he cleared his throat.

Pulling a face, Sylvain said, “Mmm…” His lips twisted. “The car park is on fire. And the dead are here to party. And we gotta go.”

Dimitri’s mouth fell agape. Felix kicked the half-open door open. Light burned behind him. His eyes were narrowed, brows pushed together and machete raised. If it didn’t seem enough like raised hell before, it certainly did now.

“Fucking _move_ it!” he yelled, and before Dimitri could even register it, he was on his feet, grabbing his rucksack and lance, and heading out of the hostel room with the both of them.

The car park was, indeed, on fire. It seemed almost laughable, considering how small the flame had been before he had gone to bed. It ate up the whole place now, their faces lighting up with the ferocity of it. Dimitri had felt cold from the sweat he had been damp with from his nightmare, but the flush of fire was so hot, it didn’t matter anymore. From the gate, walkers filed in, just how many Dimitri didn’t even have time to count. Some of them were on fire, approaching the trio with such sudden speed, Dimitri felt his heart beat faster in horrid surprise. Walkers didn’t move that fast, not ever, but maybe the fire licking up their backs provoked some sort of instinct reaction. Maybe it was one of the few things from making them dead-dead. Felix swung, splitting one’s skull. Its body fell at their feet, the smell of rotting flesh making them all gag as the fire raged on.

Sylvain retched. “I’m gonna puke.”

“Puke later, haul ass!” Felix hissed, voice muffled by his arm as he suddenly pushed Dimitri into Sylvain, urging the both of them on. Dimitri stumbled, grip tightening around his lance.

If they didn’t move now, they would be overwhelmed by the whole scene. Something hysterical bubbled up inside Dimitri, something he didn’t understand. A part of him didn’t feel properly awake. He stared back at the rapidly engulfing car park, how the fire spread to the grass patches by the gate and travelled up one of the planted trees. Dimitri exhaled tightly, as though laughing but not quite. “Did we just commit arson?!”

Felix shoved him harder. “What’re you gonna do?! Call the pigs on us?!”

The laughter that barked itself out of Sylvain was sharp, loud and afraid. He looked like he belonged in the blaze behind them. Like he had walked out of it himself. How did the fire start? They ran along the block of hotel rooms that Dimitri and Felix slept in, aiming for the corner of the fence there to jump over it, maybe try to flee through the woods. How did the whole place set itself alight? How did the walkers get in? Dimitri tried to recall their entry to the hostel, if maybe one of them had accidentally forgotten to shut the gate, if the wind maybe blew too hard and something had caught on fire. He stabbed a walker in the chest as it jumped out, seemingly out of nowhere, and Felix did the honours again. Blood shot out at Dimitri’s face, and he knew it was with purpose. He pulled the lance out and spared the gate another glance. _Shit._

“Shit,” he said, aloud, too.

 _He_ had been the one to close the gate, the last one to enter the premises. He couldn’t remember locking it behind him. _Shit._

No one questioned him, too concerned with getting out. There was smoke mingling with the unrelenting heat and suffocating smell of burning flesh. Dimitri coughed a few times and hid his face in the crook of his elbow, coughing some more. Lambert used to smoke. Mostly cigars. Sylvain came to a halt without warning, and Dimitri groaned at the impact of him against Sylvain’s back, and Felix against his.

“Oh, shit!”

Felix began, “What the—”

Sylvain elaborated, “Open fence!” Where they had initially intended to escape through had a split fence, one that a whole new swarm of walkers enticed by the sudden commotion managed to push through. Shit. “There!” He pointed across the car park, where the other block of hostel rooms was. Where were all these walkers coming from?! Shit, shit, shit. They turned to run, Dimitri due to follow them, before something pulled him down.

He yelped, falling on his front and catching himself with his hands as he felt a grip around his ankle tighten painfully. He tried to kick it off, the response being a groan and hiss that made his throat run dry. He kicked again, harder, and the hold on him loosened enough for him to scramble away a little forward on his front like an army soldier. He turned back around, trying to get to his feet, only to be lunged on. Something flared at Dimitri’s left ankle, as though the flames had spread there, too. He winced, trying hard to keep himself upright. The walker smelt terrible, like death and worse, and Dimitri caught it with his lance. It gripped it just like he did, the both of them pushing all of their weight against the other. Dimitri gritted his teeth, straining his muscles, calling upon the adrenaline that spiked even in his night terror.

“Come— _on—!”_ he snarled, squeezing his eyes shut and putting all of his energy into the next drive forward of his lance, ignoring the pain that shot up from his ankle, ready to consume him. The walker gasped, stumbling backwards. Dimitri readied his lance, the point prepared to thrust itself through the softness of the flesh there, when a _BANG_ rang through the car park. The walker dropped to the ground. Dimitri stared at it for a moment, shocked.

“Oi! Boar!” Felix’s voice brought him back, making him snap out of his gaze. “Are you insane?!”

Maybe he was. He certainly wasn’t sane. He looked back at the walker again for a split second, then forced his legs to move again. He ran to catch up with Sylvain and Felix, who were a few feet ahead. Or, at least, he _tried_ to. When he took a few steps, he grunted, only just catching himself from another fall with his lance as a walking stick. Fuck. _Fuck,_ his ankle was probably sprained. God, he hoped it was, and not broken. He breathed heavily, the throbbing overwhelming enough for Dimitri to tremble slightly. He shut his eyes tightly, trying to get himself together. Another bang, a drop of a body. Dimitri opened his eyes.

One of Sylvain’s hands held his butcher’s knife. The other held a shotgun. He and Felix rushed back to him, Sylvain helping Dimitri from one side, and Felix the other. Dimitri tried to apologise. Felix told him to shut the fuck up or he would leave him to burn. Dimitri shut the fuck up. They managed to make their way to the other hostel building, skirting off at the edge of it as the pair let Dimitri rest against the brick wall while they turned to ward off whatever walkers tailed them.

Felix was panting, eyes lit up dangerously by the flames that were still spreading. “Why didn’t you tell us you had a gun?!” he snapped at Sylvain, who aimed and shot another walker with what Dimitri could only decipher as practice and confidence.

“Hey, heads up!” Sylvain grinned over his shoulder at him in a way even Dimitri knew would make Felix’s blood boil another notch. “I’ve got a gun!”

Felix looked ready to kill him. “Fuck you!”

At Felix’s sudden swing that made him step forward, Sylvain’s eyes rounded. “Yo, watch out for the grave!”

The _what?!_

Dimitri watched as Sylvain hooked an arm around Felix’s, shooting the walker that he was trying to fight dead in the middle of its forehead before tugging him back. He pointed with his butcher’s knife. There was unearthed soil there that Dimitri didn’t recall seeing before the sun had properly set. No one knew what to say, so Sylvain just dragged Felix along the fence behind the hotel rooms, yelling at Dimitri to duck so that he could shoot another walker behind them. Dimitri did, coughing. The smoke was reaching them again, and it was overwhelming, though little in such a situation wasn’t. Dimitri limped over with the aid of his lance.

“Dimitri! You first!” Sylvain grabbed his lance and threw it over the fence before anyone could argue. Dimitri, not able to do much else but obey, gripped the fence, using his upper-body strength to pull himself up. Sylvain and Felix helped from below, pushing him up. Dimitri aimed to land onto a bush on the other side to soften his fall and avoid much more pressure on his ankle. It still hurt like hell, but Dimitri wasn’t one to complain.“Okay! Felix, you’re next!”

Felix opened his mouth to object, cut off by another shot from Sylvain’s gun. He tried again, although to say something else entirely. “You’re wasting all the bullets, idiot!”

“And _you’re_ wasting our time! C’mon, upsy daisy!” Sylvain tackled him awkwardly around the waist before hoisting him up and half over the fence. Dimitri would have laughed, at the way the pair of them looked and at the expression on Felix’s face, if not for his ragged breaths and focused attempt to rise to his feet again.

Felix dropped down onto the ground beside Dimitri, watching as Sylvain huffed and struggled to fight off a walker that followed them to the back of the block.

“Hey,” he said, voice a little gruff but tone playful despite everything. “D’you think I could risk going back for that pot?”

An explosion rumbled from the other side of the car park, and a whole new wave of heat hit them all, even so far back. Dimitri remembered a car rammed into one of the posts there when they arrived at the hostel.

Sylvain slashed at the walker, humming thoughtfully. “Guess not. Incoming!” He jumped up at the fence, climbing over and dropping down from the top. He turned back to wave cheerily at some of the walkers slugging over to try and claw at them through the wire. Sylvain was all cheek and risk. Or maybe he was just suicidal. “Alright. Ready?”

“I can walk—” Dimitri tried insisting.

“Shut up,” Felix suggested with a venomous bite. The pain in his ankle seemed to agree.

Like before, the both of them helped Dimitri rest his body weight against them, moving as quickly as they could through the trees. Sylvain said, a little breathless as the adrenaline started to die down, “Gotta keep moving out, maybe find some trees to tie ourselves to on a branch. Like in _The Hunger Games._ Ever seen that movie?” No response. Sylvain huffed. “Dunno if those walkers coming through the open fence might find us again. Have to be careful.”

“Do you have rope?” Felix asked, sighing massively at how Dimitri’s lance dragged itself a little along the ground with how oddly Dimitri had to hold it, snatching it out of his hand to hold it himself.

“Fingers crossed,” Sylvain told him. Felix swore.

Guilt. Dimitri wasn’t unfamiliar with it. He tried apologising again, and Felix just gritted his teeth, as though holding back any last remaining self-restraint to not ditch him and run off with Sylvain. He sucked in a breath as he knocked his bad foot against a rock sticking out of the leaves.

“How’s the ankle? Or is it your foot?” Sylvain asked as they weaved in and out of the overgrowth.

Dimitri hung his head in some shame. “Ankle. Sprained, I think. Walker grabbed me.”

Sylvain nodded. “They’re stronger than they look, huh.” He said it as if he knew firsthand. He might have.

“We can’t travel like this,” Felix said, looking straight ahead. Dimitri knew that look. The _if-I-even-look-at-you-right-now-I-may-just-explode_ look. Dimitri hated that look. He remembered how once it was rare for him to see it. “If we start going somewhere and get ambushed we’re fucked.”

Fucked because of Dimitri, no less.

Ducking under a low branch, Sylvain hummed. “We can find a place to kill time before sunrise and at least move a little each day until Dimitri’s ankle heals enough to go long distance again. Until then, we can figure out our route for the Sealed Forest.” He shifted a little, as though to make the position more comfortable for him. Dimitri doubted it did much. “Hopefully we have enough shit to at least keep the swelling at a minimum when we tend to it.”

Felix didn’t say anything, and Dimitri didn’t have much to add on. He figured his silence would be favourable for the time being. They trudged until the light of the fire seemed to diminish slightly. No walkers followed them, as far as they could tell, and only the faint sound of some sort of bird call echoed in the vastness of the woods. Dimitri limped pathetically. If his ankle was particularly bad, they could be stuck in a standstill for weeks. _Weeks._ He was an idiot. Even if that walker attacking him had been a twisted game of chance, he was still an idiot. If he hadn’t left that stupid gate unlocked—

“Here.”

Felix half-heartedly slackened his hold on Dimitri, and ducked from under his arm to ditch his rucksack onto the dead leaves. The sun was due to rise soon, with how the horizon was lightening. Sylvain, feeling more sympathetic than Felix would, helped Dimitri against a tree for him to lean onto, and with a whispered word of thanks, Dimitri fumbled to set his own bag down. The air seemed so much colder now that the danger of the flames was evaded. He held back a shudder as he slid down the tree trunk carefully to rest his ankle, hissing as he used his hand to move his leg slowly.

Sylvain stretched, joints popping. “Too soon to break out a fire?” He was joking, Dimitri knew. Dimitri didn’t feel like laughing. Neither did Felix, evidently, but he couldn’t remember the last time Felix had laughed—genuinely, at least.

“I can do the watch-shift while you both sl—”

Snapping without mercy, Felix told him, again, “Shut up!”

Dimitri blinked. Sylvain pulled a face, slipping the strap of the duffle bag off. “Fe, c’mon—”

“No,” Felix said, firm and with clenched fists. Dimitri was afraid to open his own, only to close them again. Felix stared down at him. “Are you bit.” It was too rough to be a proper question.

Wetting his lips, Dimitri said, “Felix—”

Without warning, Felix fisted Dimitri’s jacket, raising him from the cold ground slightly so that their eyes met. “I said: are you bit?”

Dimitri swallowed. “No.”

Something jumped at Felix’s temple. “Scratched?”

“No.”

Felix released him. “You’re fucking stupid.” His nostrils flared, and he was close to shaking all over with anger, Dimitri knew, Dimitri had seen this before. “Fucking _stupid,_ fucking—” He threw his hands up in frustration, almost growling. “You’re pathetic. Nothing changes with you, _nothing,_ you always say you’ll change, that you’ll try, that you’re getting there—bull-fucking- _shit!_ You’re doing _fuck all_ but putting us all at risk! You’re nothing but a boar, unhinged and losing it and pathetic! It’s sick how I end up getting stuck with you.”

Silence rang. If anyone besides Felix breathed, it wasn’t heard over how he heaved, so terribly anguished, enraged, upset—

“Stop it,” Felix demanded. “Stop it, I know what you’re doing in that messed-up head of yours—stop analysing me, stop pitying me, stop _blaming_ yourself! You don’t deserve blame! You know _why?!”_ It came out like a taunting whisper, and he didn’t wait for Dimitri to respond. “Because with blame you have a chance of forgiveness. I’ll sooner join those dead bastards before I forgive you for any of the shit you’ve put us through.”

Dimitri couldn’t look at him anymore, gaze falling to his lap. He said nothing. Felix continued to breathe heavily.

“And you—” He knew he was addressing Sylvain now, likely pointing an accusing finger. “First fucking night you spend with us and you nearly get us _killed?!_ Is this some sort of joke to you? Because if you want to die, go right ahead, just don’t drag me in with you. You flirt with every damn thing, and you’ve gotten so bored and desperate you’re offering your best interests to Death. Death doesn’t do one night stands.” Sylvain said nothing. A beat. Some resignation in Felix’s tone. “When I get back, I either want you gone or figuring out how to make sure the boar doesn’t worsen his condition. I don’t care which you choose, just decide quickly.”

He picked up his rucksack, dropped it in his haste, and picked it up again, stomping off.

Sylvain cleared his throat. “Where’re you going?”

“Away,” Felix said shortly. “Scoping the area. I don’t know.”

Dimitri’s voice was quiet, but he was sure his words reached Felix’s ears anyway. “You know the signal.”

The crunch of leaves and twigs underfoot continued for a moment or so longer, fading until they hardly existed at all. Silence followed it. Dimitri still didn’t look up. His face had flushed with shame, and he had tried so hard not to recoil at every second word spat from Felix’s mouth. How many more times could he assure himself that he didn’t mean any of it?

Sylvain breathed out, long and low. “Well,” he said. “He’s not just crabby about a bad night’s sleep. You gotta run me through what happened, man, I can’t just stand on the sidelines for long without knowing at least something.” He approached Dimitri with his flashlight, kneeling down to untie the shoelace of the boot he wore on his bad foot. Dimitri flinched slightly at the pain that made itself heard.

When it came to addressing it, Dimitri could be straightforward. “I am the reason his father and Glenn are dead.” Fingers stilled at the laces. Dimitri tilted his head upwards slightly to catch the furrow of Sylvain’s brows as he held on the flashlight with his teeth. He waited for him to continue. So Dimitri did. “We were at the Fhirdiad house when it all happened. My… My father died very quickly. We had been celebrating our acceptance to college there, which was why Felix and his family were there, too. We both had gotten into Fhirdiad. It was all cut short, though. They attacked, and my father died, and we had to run.” Dimitri swallowed, trying hard not to close his eyes for longer than he needed to for blinking. He didn’t want to see it again.

Sylvain helped loosen the tongue of the boot, carefully trying to ease Dimitri’s foot out of it. Dimitri tightened his grip on his knee, grunting quietly. “‘Orry,” he said around the mouthful of the flashlight.

Dimitri watched the boot slip. “We gathered as much as we could. Food, water, weapons from my father’s collection. It was myself, Felix, Rodrigue and Glenn.” Dimitri gave in, lolling his head back against the bark and shutting his eyes. “Glenn went first. He got bit trying to jump in and save me. It was… early on in this whole mess. We didn’t know much about the dead at that point yet, but with how fast Glenn got sick… It wasn’t hard to figure out what would happen next. Glenn wanted to wait it out, though, in case it was something that could pass. We even tried amputating his arm but… Well, it was too late.” Flashes of a sweaty, waxy face, so alike to Felix’s it sent chills down Dimitri’s spine, appeared behind his closed lids. Matted hair, but a weak smile despite the sickly colour to Glenn’s complexion. “Felix wouldn’t let him go until he became one of them. Rodrigue told him he died with honour.”

At that, Sylvain swore, spitting the flashlight out. “That’s fucking twisted.” Some quiet rage trembled in his tone. Dimitri managed a small, humourless laugh.

“It… tore the both of them apart. He was angry at his father for romanticising his son’s death, and angry at me for being the cause of it. I… I cannot say I blame him. It was my own recklessness that brought upon his end.” But Dimitri didn’t mention how his ghost haunted him. How in the dark that still lingered now, if he had his eyes even half-lidded, he would see him, resting against the tree opposite. Smiling. “Not long after, Rodrigue died. He… He, too, gave his life for me. Felix killed him before he could turn.”

The boot was off. Dimitri opened his eyes. Glenn’s back was against the opposing tree. Sylvain was crouched, flashlight pointing at the dead leaves. “Dimitri…”

“I do not blame him for his behaviour. I am only sorry that he found a way to also lash out at you. I’m not sure how this all happened, but nonetheless we all could have dealt with it better.” Dimitri bent his leg, pulling it to his chest so that he could slowly peel his sock off. “All I ask is that you don’t bring it up with him. Not unless he does first.”

Sylvain nodded, face still solemn. “You got it, man.” They stayed like that for a moment, with Dimitri struggling with the sock and Sylvain digesting his words. Another hiss from him roused Sylvain from his thoughts, and he rose to go over to his bag. “I don’t know what we really have to help with relief, besides some painkillers, but we can figure something out.”

Dimitri threw his sock over at his boot. “Thank you."

For a few minutes, Sylvain spent his time hunched over his and Dimitri’s bags, rummaging for the best thing to offer him for the time being. He muttered under his breath, reading the small script on the back of medicine labels, and Dimitri watched Glenn as he did.

Glenn was still smiling. Dimitri wasn’t sure if he ever stopped. He wanted to speak to him, but feared startling Sylvain, so he didn’t. Instead he stared. Glenn stared back.

When Glenn spoke, it was with Felix’s voice. “You get people killed, boar.”

Dimitri looked away, trying to swallow the small, panicked noise that tried to crawl out of his throat.

“One sec, I promise.” Sylvain mistook it as pain.

Glenn looked over at Sylvain. His smile was warping into a grin, monstrous. Dead. “He went back for you. When do you think he’ll stop bothering?”

Sylvain’s joints popped as he stood up again. “Got it!” He threw a water bottle up as he did, catching it easily. He was trying to lighten things up a little, adopting the same boyish nature he had to him that Dimitri had been obsessed with in his youth. The poster-child for something he never quite understood. “Here.” He offered something to Dimitri. He numbly accepted.

He tried to chug down whatever he had popped into his mouth. Glenn considered Sylvain, clicking his tongue. “Nah,” he said. “He’ll die for you. He wishes for death, too, but not in the same way you do. He reeks of it.”

Dimitri tried to catch Sylvain’s eyes as he said that. Sylvain smiled a little. He tried to search for it.

“Better?” Sylvain asked, hands on his hips as he looked down at Dimitri.

“Better,” he lied. When he closed his eyes, Sylvain was bloodied and cold. When he opened them, he was alive and whole. He went back to drag their things over to where Dimitri sat. “Sylvain?”

Glenn watched. Sylvain said, “Yeah?”

Dimitri stared into Glenn’s dead eyes. “I’m glad you’re here."

Glenn shook his head.

Sylvain smiled again, like he meant it. “Me, too.”


	4. CHAPTER FOUR: AZURE MOON.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix didn’t have to try at all to look like Glenn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> want you all to know this is my third time writing this damn note box because the first time i did it my draft on ao3 didnt fucking save and the second time i was doing it i accidentally closed the tab and i swore for a solid two minutes on call with my friend. sorry gayle.
> 
> ANYWAY chapter four and i am for once remembering to mention that most of my knowledge comes from playthroughs i watched of the walking dead games when i was like. 13. and a little from the show but i never finished that and also the games >>> the show every day i miss clementine and lee
> 
> also thank u once again to sammy who we all know is the only person ever for helping me edit this monster i urge you all to read [one of their most recent fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26016823?view_adult=true) that broke me in such few words, they are truly a bestseller in the making
> 
> as far as content warnings go for this chapter, i don't think there's much besides the typical violence you guys see anyway, apart from the mention of vomit where it says "felix almost threw up", but again if anyone thinks something should be flagged up do let me know
> 
> finally before i leave you all to read this chapter i would just like to thank you all for nearly 500 hits i think thats super sexy i appreciate it a lot along with every kudos and comment, trust me it's any and every writer's motivation source so please keep them coming <3
> 
> i have a good flow going right now so if god allows it i will have chapter 5 up soon enough too. until then, enjoy!

“Do you think he’ll be alright?”

Felix sighed, heavy and irritated. “I don’t care. He gets himself killed, it’s one less mouth to feed. He lives, we still have our walking GPS.”

Kicking a rock down the road, Sylvain said cheerily, “Not really walking, is he?”

Refraining the need to sigh again, this time harder, Felix slashed at a low branch with his machete. It dropped to the asphalt, narrowly missing Sylvain’s shoulder on the way down. “He’ll be fine. Stop fussing or I’ll send you back to babysit him.”

Sylvain snorted. “And let you go alone? Yeah, sure.” Felix opened his mouth, and although Sylvain couldn’t see him do so he still added quickly, “And don’t even try saying you’d be more than capable of scoping the place out by yourself. You’re not invincible, Fe. That was just in our ‘lil pretend games.”

Nearly spluttering, Felix defended a little too hard for such a light poke, “I was _eight!”_ He flexed his fingers on the machete.

“Eight and a _very_ convincing knight. What was it that you called yourself? The Sword of Faerghus?” Sylvain feigned thought, and when Felix turned to face him it was with coloured cheeks and determination.

“Shield, it was Shield of Faer—Why are we even discussing this?!” He caught himself, but cursed in his head, knowing damn well he had fallen into some sort of trap Sylvain had set up.

Sylvain clicked his fingers in recognition, his faux confusion dropping with a flourish like a mask from his face, only to be replaced with a grin. He was like some sort of actor, the world his stage and everyone his audience. Felix had taken a just over two year long interlude from it all, but if anything Sylvain seemed to have gotten better at his tricks, his manipulated tone, gestures and smiles. Felix was tripping over his feet trying to catch up, because if Felix knew anything it was this: trust no one but yourself, and no one included Sylvain Jose Gautier. An apocalypse wasn’t the time nor place to be fooled with whatever Sylvain would put down, and he was already putting down a lot, leaving Felix mulling behind the front lines of his mind.

“That was it! Man, you even had a fancy shield to go with your sword. We all said it was some lost relic that belonged to your family. You were so cute,” Sylvain cooed. Here, Felix had grown to understand over the course of the past few weeks with him, Sylvain was trying to lighten the mood. He liked doing that, it seemed. Liked it, or felt the compelling need for it. Though with the tension between Felix and the boar, it was likely it was the latter option.

Felix tightened his grip on his machete, gritting his teeth a little with a mixture of annoyance and embarrassment. “I was _not_ cute. Drop it.”

At that, Sylvain fell into step with him, walking together now side-by-side. “No, no, you’re right, my bad. You still are.”

“Shut your mouth or I’ll push you into a zombie pit to indulge your flirting,” Felix snapped.

For the love of god—Felix shut his eyes and exhaled through his nose slowly—this guy had guts, putting his arm around him like that. Casual, flippant, maybe even careless. Sylvain tapped his finger against Felix’s shoulder, laughing a little. “Nah, it’s like you said: Death doesn’t do one night stands. That was some real poetry, by the way. You always emulate Indech when you’re mad?”

In one swift movement, Sylvain was pressed up against one of the thicker trees sprouted along the road, with one of Felix’s hands spread out to the left side of his face. The tip of Felix’s machete teased the freckled skin of his throat and a faint, white line chased after it as Felix ran it lightly across. Sylvain only shivered, but his grin remained. It was infuriating, and Felix felt himself boil in his jacket. Weak sunlight filtered through the mostly bare branches above them.

Silence followed, bar their breaths—Sylvain’s even, paced, and Felix’s coming out in frustrated huffs out of his nose. Something in the woods stirred. The steps were too light to be a walker’s, so maybe a rabbit or something just as small.

“The sexual tension here is spectacular,” Sylvain said after a moment, voice smooth and teasing. Another mask. Felix wondered how deep his blade would have to dig to even scrape Sylvain’s true face, to leave a lasting mark to show how he had kept looking while others turned away in resignation and ignorance. He felt an impulse jump to his fingers, blind and almost selfish, as he pressed the slightest bit harder. The skin beneath the tip dipped and paled, but Felix knew how to keep blood from spilling.

Sylvain’s eyes widened minutely. Felix almost smiled.

He was still in there, somewhere.

Felix waited for more inclination—a nervous swallow, a wince, the smallest twitch to his brows— 

Nothing.

There was method to Sylvain’s acting; it wasn’t for the entertainment of others, as many often mistook his antics for. No, Sylvain fumbled between costumes and stage-lighting and positions for survival, with the simple childhood days of dress rehearsal long behind him.

Felix scoffed, pulling back. He didn’t wait for Sylvain to peel himself off the bark, and instead started walking again. He kicked at the rock Sylvain had sent flying down the asphalt earlier. Something about Sylvain always seemed so repressed, even when he was at his loudest. Felix didn’t understand what he had to hide. The world was ending. Half of Fódlan was dead. Then again, even as that was all true, Felix was furthest from himself, too, more than he had been in years. Maybe he wasn’t one to judge, but Felix liked to judge—was well versed in the art, actually—so Sylvain Jose Gautier be damned.

Apparently, said Sylvain Jose Gautier didn’t receive the message, because he jogged to catch up. Knowing him, he probably heard the message loud and clear, but ignored it.

“You’re so tense,” Sylvain told him.

“You’re so stupid,” Felix returned.

They walked for a half an hour longer, and though Sylvain talked for almost the entirety of it, he must have grasped some sort of hold on common sense considering how he died down his antics a bit, not pushing too hard when Felix replied with as few syllables as he could.

With the past few weeks of them camping out in the woods neighbouring the burned down hostel, spring was coming into fruition before their eyes. Trees, while empty still for the most part, had begun to grow small leaves again, and Felix was awaiting the sight of grass pushing through the cold, hard soil. The shift from season from season was something he had always taken for granted. It seemed a strange thing to pay little attention to and regret it later, because frankly it was. But Felix wished he knew how long it would take for the trees to be fully green again, and for small daisies and dandelions to bloom on the outskirts of concrete in small slivers of grass around streetlights. Usually, he would just look up from his phone one day on the way back from fencing training, and there spring would be, and when Felix would look up next, summer would be pushing it out.

But the days were growing slightly warmer. In the woods, it was rare for any of them to shed a layer with how chilly the air still was in the shadows, but when they caught themselves in a few spots of sunlight, Sylvain would shut his eyes and let the warmth sink into his skin, and Felix would blink up to watch the birds that flew by, and Dimitri would stare at how deformed his shadow looked against a log. The days were also longer, though hardly. Felix hoped that it would be sooner rather than later that the hours of daylight would extend long enough to allow the three of them more time to travel. They couldn’t stay in one place for so long. It made Felix antsy, and he blamed the boar for that.

A silence had settled between the two of them after Felix’s last half-hearted hum to whatever Sylvain had said before it was broken again.

Sylvain exaggerated his next step as he stretched his legs. With a whine he asked, “How much longer are we gonna walk for?”

Felix almost missed Dimitri. Almost. At least he didn’t ask as many stupid questions. “I don’t know, check your Google Maps,” he told him bluntly with a roll of his eyes.

“Man. I miss Google Maps.”

“Can you miss it quietly.”

“Have I ever been quiet ever?”

“You even talk in your sleep.”

At that, Sylvain’s stupid grin returned. “Is that why I have so many bruises on my shin? I _knew_ someone was kicking me!”

“Be grateful it wasn’t your gut,” Felix said and Sylvain had the audacity to laugh. With a sharp elbow to his ribs, Felix silenced him. “Shut up. Look over there.” He pointed, the material of the glove hugging his pointer finger split. Maybe he could cut a finger-less version of this pair when he would find less worry in his fingertips freezing off.

Walkers hovered around the gas station, at least ten of them as far as Felix could tell from where they had stopped on the road. The signs that would normally flash, grabbing the attention of anybody driving past, had died entirely by now. Felix wondered how hard it would be to break into the store, assuming they were the first to raid it.

“Gun would be too risky,” Sylvain said, sobering. “The shots might attract more of them, and I don’t really feel like waiting a hoard of zombies out in a store like that.”

Felix nodded. “We’ll have to be strategic about taking them out, considering close-combat is our only option. If we catch too much attention at once we’ll get swarmed.”

“Man, if Dimitri were here we would be better off.”

He didn’t like how he agreed, so Felix shouldered Sylvain into motion again, the both of them slowly approaching the gas station. He dropped his voice into a hush. “Don’t split off. If we attack them together it’ll be easier. Don’t be sloppy.”

“I’ve never been sloppy,” Sylvain said. Felix would run out of fingers to use as evidence against that statement. Sylvain grabbed his butcher’s knife from the side of his rucksack, throwing it up in the air so it spun a few times before catching it by the handle again. Felix knew he was showing off, his way of joking around.

They both fell silent again the closer they came to the gas station. The sound of the dead never failed to make the hairs on the back of Felix’s neck rise, with how their feet dragged and their breathing came out ragged and struggled. The stench was just as bad, if not worse. Felix knelt next to one of the self-service gas pumps, and Sylvain followed suit. When he leaned forward to check the group of walkers out, he grimaced. There were a lot of them. Thirteen. Felix was never one to indulge in stupid superstitions, but he didn’t find much comfort in that number. The ratio of living to dead didn’t seem very promising. He supposed they could come back tomorrow, when hopefully less of them would hang around at the station, but frankly, Felix was tired of sitting idle, waiting for Dimitri’s useless ankle to heal enough for them to do more than just limp through the woods a little just to get some sort of progress checked off for the day. There was no telling if the walkers would even scatter and thin in numbers, and knowing their luck it would probably go the opposite way and more of them would claim the gas station for themselves.

Felix straightened his back. Looking back at Sylvain over his shoulder, he mouthed, _“Stay close,”_ and once Sylvain nodded in understanding, Felix rose. The pair of them hadn’t fought enough together for them to really have the same sort of routine as Felix and Dimitri did. Sylvain struggled to keep up with Felix’s brutal pace, spurred on with how easily he got tunnel vision and almost allowed his body to go into some sort of auto-pilot mode. With three easy slashes from Felix, Sylvain followed with clumsy footing, looking around a little too much to check where the former was while trying to ward off whatever walker decided to try and sink its teeth into his skin.

Felix was used to close combat in ways neither the boar nor Sylvain were, and he had fencing to thank for that. He knew how to keep himself on his toes and how to predict his opponent’s next move, and the dead were slower than the living he would compete with in the past which just made survival that one bit easier. Sylvain’s weapon of choice had always been his pretty, practiced lines, body language that sent thrill down spines, but the dead knew nothing of flirting and seduction, so no doubt Sylvain was still honing his fighting skills in ways Felix didn’t need to. It showed in the way he accidentally cornered himself, his back to the wall of the store of the station.

“Shit!” Felix heard him hiss. He turned to search for him as the walker in front of him dropped at his feet, blood flowing past the gash in its skull.

Sylvain’s butcher’s knife fell from his grasp, knocked out of his hand by the walker throwing itself at him, and he fought to keep it from attacking him. Both of Sylvain’s hands gripped either of its wrists and tried to push it off. Like he had said, the dead were stronger than they looked. Felix ducked under the reach of another walker that tried to snatch him from the other side of the gas pump, trying to make haste as he ran over to where Sylvain pulled strained faces.

Felix sent a well aimed kick to the walker’s hip, and it crumpled like paper, its heavy body slamming against the concrete floor. Sylvain breathed heavily, watching as Felix stabbed the walker through the flesh of its forehead until his machete’s tip met the hard ground beneath it. It stopped flailing almost at once, arms falling to its sides. When Felix turned around next. Sylvain had his butcher’s knife in hand again.

Swallowing, Sylvain nodded at him, attempting a smile. It seemed even the likes of him found it hard to hide his distraughtness through his role as somebody else. “Thanks.”

His boot pressed down on the walker’s chin made it less difficult to ease the machete out of its brains. “Next time, don’t expect me to save your sorry ass.”

Sylvain had no time to throw a response back, and Felix saw as he knocked the temple of the walker approaching him with the edge of the knife’s handle. He scoffed to himself lightly at the sight, how even after such a close call Sylvain handled himself with too much laziness and too little care to his movements, too much play and not enough practice. The boar fought like a monster, and Sylvain fought like he was suicidal. Felix fought like a warrior. He knew which of them would likely live longest. Then again, Glenn was no different than he was, and where was he now.

Bitterness tasted on his tongue, and with a new wave of angry vigour, Felix spun to face two walkers at once, his muscles tensing with his swings. Walker blood was always cold and dried quicker. It tasted like shit, and stained his teeth if he pulled his lips back with a grimace. Toothpaste. He would have to look for it in the store once this was sorted.

One body fell behind him, and Felix knew it sounded too empty for it to be Sylvain’s, so he kept going until the pair before him joined it. He gulped down on air, shoulders rising with each breath as he held his machete in the air. The drops of blood painting the concrete that fell from the blade were soon covered by the thick of the blood pooling from brains. A hand placed itself on his shoulder, and it was too warm for Felix to startle and strike again.

“That’s all of them,” Sylvain told him. Felix slowly lowered the machete.

“Store,” he said shortly, shrugging Sylvain’s hand off as he wiped at his face with his arm.

They stepped over one body and Sylvain pushed the glass door open to the store. No lights were on inside, and once the door was held shut against its frame as quietly as possible by Felix, they both took a flashlight out each and turned them on. Felix raised his finger to his lips, telling Sylvain to keep quiet until they were sure the place was safe. As per the usual procedure Sylvain had adapted to, he went right and Felix went left.

The shelves were almost entirely empty of non-perishable food. Felix grimaced as he walked carefully on the tiled floor, the beam from his flashlight shining on packages that were long-expired. Some flies buzzed around, having flown in from the open window by the cash register. As he stooped down to look for some toothpaste, he signalled to Sylvain, letting him know his side was in the clear. Seconds later, Sylvain mimicked him, and Felix shoved the end of the flashlight into his mouth, shrugging off his rucksack and unzipping it to shove two packs of toothpaste in. He hoped to find some water around, too, but the only one he could find was one dusty bottle that had clearly given someone the slip and rolled away to a corner where two shelves met.

If luck even existed, it was no longer on their side it seemed, assuming it had been in the first place. Felix sighed. While they still had some food left for them to ration for the next few weeks, they would certainly have to move on soon and look for another town to search through. Damn Dimitri. Damn boar prince.

Felix walked past the register, wrinkling his nose at the terrible smell of gone-off hotdog sausages that were left abandoned following the wake of the dead. He remembered a few times as a kid Glenn would tell him to wait in the car at gas stations while their father went to use the restroom, returning with a massive grin and hotdogs clutched in hand, whistling cheerily and feigning innocence when Rodrigue would slide back into the driver seat and give the both of the skeptic looks as they held half-eaten treats. The memory ought to have been fond, but Felix had no energy to feel much else but gnawing at his gut.

Sylvain had his back to him, a folded over newspaper in his hand that he was reading piquing Felix’s interest.

The printed title read in bolded, block letters:

**_PRESIDENT BLAIDDYD DUSCUR SCANDAL DEBATE: FRIEND OR FOE?_ **

It was dated months back, a week before the dead’s rise. Such political affairs that seemed so important at the time became nothing in an instant, as almost everything else in the world did. Felix remembered how on edge Rodrigue had been following the sudden revived discussion surrounding the assassination attempt on Dimitri, his father, and the whole guard. Glenn was among them, and Felix remembered how he had a panic attack upon reading the news in the kitchen of House Fraldarius, heavy tears leaving trails on his cheeks as his father tried to get him to understand that no one was hurt besides a few scrapes. He also recalled how tightly he had held both Dimitri and his brother once they had arrived back at House Blaiddyd, weeping loudly with snot running from his nose as he fisted their shirts fiercely. He was thirteen at the time, and so afraid. No doubt, the returning interest to the event was staged to complicate things for Lambert as elections drew nearer, and while the President himself was hardly fazed by what the papers chattered about, Dimitri was, and Felix spent a great deal of time trying to get him to relax and distract himself with college preparations instead.

“Crazy, huh?” Sylvain said, evidently done reading. “Feels like so long ago but also like it was yesterday.”

Felix said exactly what he thought about it. “It doesn’t matter anymore. No use dwelling on it.” Sylvain sighed. Felix didn’t bother trying to distinguish what it meant. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

“I’ll be there in a second. Maybe I can find some trashy novel here that’s not too trashy to read on the road.” Sylvain tucked the newspaper back to where it came from, stepping past Felix to the small shelved selection of some generic book titles that lacked all appeal. Too many of them had shirtless men on the front with women trailing their fingers down their chests. Gross.

Felix shouldered the bathroom door open, and quickly checked every stall to see if it was empty. Each one of them was. He was glad that the small window beside the mirrors and sinks let in enough light for him to see himself. That thought flew out of said window the second he caught an actual glimpse of the reflection in the mirror.

The dead were hard to impersonate, and nothing seemed to give them justice once they passed on. Photos no longer looked like them enough, and videos almost distorted their appearance and voices, blurring memory with fiction produced by the mind for comfort’s sake. Felix remembered his mother’s funeral vaguely, but what he knew was he spent more time staring at a portrait of her propped up against her coffin than listening to what people had to say about her. The more he stared the less she looked like the woman who would comb back his fringe while he cried his tears, and the more his eyes clouded the less she looked human and tangible. Even her name on her gravestone didn’t seem real nor correct, and in the rare moments where she was spoken about, Felix had had a hard time recognising each syllable to it.

Felix didn’t have to try at all to look like Glenn.

Even while his brother lived, it wasn’t exactly uncommon for people to mistake the two for each other. But it was easy to distinguish their differences quick enough; Glenn was taller, his face a little longer, and his eyes were the same as their father’s. Felix was shorter, his face rounder, and his eyes belonged to their mother. Their smiles were also different. Felix couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled.

The reflection didn’t quite look like him, but it also didn’t look like Glenn. Maybe it would be right to say it looked like a merged version of both Fraldarius brothers. Blood was smeared across one cheek and the bridge of the reflection’s nose, and the fringe that hung in its eyes was too long. The reflection looked as dead as an alive person could look.

Maybe if the reflection smiled, it would choose a brother. Crooked and playful, making crinkles appear around the eyes would show Glenn. Diluted but honest with loosened shoulders and maybe it would show Felix.

It felt wrong to smile. What was there to smile about? He did it anyway, just for a moment.

Felix nearly threw up.

The door to the bathroom swung open, and Felix dropped his gaze to the sink, watching as his knuckles paled from how tightly he gripped the sides. Sylvain’s reflection, the tease of rusty-red hair, walked past the hung head of the Fraldarius brother, which one exactly, Felix didn’t want to look up and see for himself. One of the doors of a toilet stall creaked, and the sound of a lock echoed.

“Y’know, I never thought I’d be so excited to piss in a gas station restroom. When’s the last time you saw a toilet, Fe?” Sylvain’s voice cut through the suffocating quiet that had wound itself around Felix’s neck like noose without him noticing.

Felix nearly laughed, startled and short. He didn’t. “I don’t know,” Felix told him instead, forcing his hands to relax his fingers. He took a breath and moved to pull his rucksack off his back. He sat it in the neighbouring sink and rummaged for his dagger.

“I remember,” Sylvain continued, “when we were kids and we would make pit stops at gas stations you would always refuse to pee in these places, no matter how badly you needed to go. I had loads of fun making my water bottle slosh water in your ear just to piss you off. You always had extreme reactions, either kicking me or pushing me into Ingrid.” Felix heard a smile in his voice as he spoke, but then also heard it drop. Neither of them spoke. Felix was still looking for the dagger, something almost frantic in his search. There was some movement from Sylvain’s stall. Then: “Shit. Can you pass me some toilet paper?”

Felix let go of the rucksack with a huff, annoyed. He looked in one of the stalls. It didn’t have a roll, so he looked into another one. That one did. He threw it carelessly over the door of Sylvain’s stall.

“Ow,” Sylvain said as a thud sounded. “Thanks.”

Without saying a word, Felix dug his hands back into the rucksack, looking again. Did he leave it somewhere? Maybe the hostel? No, he had no reason to take it out there. He couldn’t use his machete for this. His movements became frustrated and he was losing patience quickly, gritting his teeth until he saw something beside the reflection that he refused to look at unless he needed to.

“What’re you looking for?” Sylvain asked. He didn’t hear the lock slide open, nor the door creak again. Felix gave no response, he kept moving around the shit in the bag angrily. “Hey.” Sylvain’s tone softened, and if anything it made the strange rage in Felix’s chest flare up.

“My dagger,” Felix spat, shoving the rucksack back. “It’s not fucking there.”

Sylvain gently— _too_ gently—helped Felix stand aside. “Hold on,” he told him. Felix wiped his nose with the back of his gloved hand when it itched. “This one?” Sylvain pulled his dagger out from one of the side pockets.

Felix was so fucking stupid.

He nodded mutely, and when Sylvain held it out he accepted it.

“What do you need it for?”

“Hair. Too long.”

“Do you need help?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Your hands are—”

Felix’s eyes burned with something deep when he spun round to face Sylvain. “Don’t.”

“Okay,” Sylvain said, raising his own hands—steady, relaxed—in defence.

With a swallow, Felix looked away. He faced the mirror. It seemed as though the reflection had just as much trouble choosing which Fraldarius brother to be just as Felix did.

He hardly registered Sylvain leaning against one of the sinks, watching Felix as he roughly cut strands of his fringe, not caring too much about it being even and more so concerned about making sure he could actually see. Dark hair fell to the sink. The light met the eyes in the reflection. They were amber. Glenn’s were a blue. Something in Felix’s shoulders loosened.

When he was done with his fringe, he shoved the dagger into his mouth, hands going to the back to undo the hair tie holding his hair together in a bun. When it fell out, it stopped just below Felix’s shoulder blades. Short. He had to go short. He bunched the hair to one side, grabbing the dagger again and holding it to where his neck ended and the back of his skull began. He hesitated. He tried to imagine the reflection with short hair like that.

It didn’t make sense.

Felix moved the blade lower, and the metal flashed in the sunlight that seeped through the window. He forced it through his hair at his shoulders. More chunks fell into the sink as Felix cut it. When there was no more to cut, Felix dropped the dagger into the sink with a clatter. He let go of the hair he had bunched together, shaking his head so it fell evenly on either side of his head. It looked a little choppy, but Felix couldn’t give a single flying fuck if he tried.

He fumbled for the hair tie again, and he rushed to put his hair up into the bun again. He didn’t spare his reflection another look when he was done.

“Feel better?”

Felix almost forgot Sylvain was there, and he nearly jumped. His eyes flitted over, snatching a glance of the careful and trained expression on Sylvain’s face.

His lips curled, unreadable. “It’s just hair.”

The door made way for Felix, and he didn’t wait for Sylvain to follow.

They did one last check around the store, and as they left, Sylvain provided his own short list of things he found worth taking. He seemed more interested in talking about whatever lousy book he’d picked up, and he thumbed through it as both he and Felix walked back from where they came from. Felix tried to listen, flexing his hands around his machete again as Sylvain spoke. A sword in his hand always seemed to ground him. He tried his best now to chase that same relief.

Glenn used to poke fun at him.

“You were born in the wrong century, I swear. You’re obsessed with a sword the same way a medieval mercenary was.”

Wrong century or not, that obsession was keeping him alive.

Felix didn’t know when Sylvain had stopped talking, but the trudge back through the woods seemed almost eerie. They faced a few stray walkers here and there on the road, and rarely did they ever really cross paths with one in the midst of trees, but something about the quiet unsettled him. Leaves and twigs crunched underfoot, and Sylvain made a show of jumping down a larger log like he was some kid. Maybe he wished he was.

It seemed pathetic how they had spent enough time camping out here for Felix to start to recognise some leaning trees, directing the both of them to where they had left Dimitri that morning. Sylvain sensed they were close enough, because he called into the trees cheerily, making Felix smack him hard for being stupid enough to raise his voice.

“Hey, Dimitri! Clap twice if you’re not dead!”

No claps followed, and Sylvain pulled a face, as though to say _shit, that joke backfired._ Rustling of leaves spiked some alertness inside Felix. He flexed his fingers again, and Sylvain tensed, retrieving his butcher’s knife again. Felix was going to kill him, honest to god.

Dimitri came into their line of sight, and Sylvain sighed in relief, lowering his arm. “You didn’t clap, what the fuck, man?”

“I imagine Felix would skewer me if I even tried,” Dimitri told him wryly once they came close enough.

“Sylvain would go first for yelling his head off,” Felix affirmed grimly and walked past Dimitri.

Sylvain said, “Should you be walking on that?”

“I did say I feel a lot better. It’s been a few weeks. A few more days and I’m confident we can get moving once again.”

Felix scoffed. “It’s your death, not mine.”

Dimitri didn’t comment on it. Instead, he said, “I assume the trip to the gas station was successful?”

Although Felix made an effort to walk ahead to where they had settled, Sylvain’s voice still carried clearly enough. “Not exactly. It was pretty much dry there. Kinda a waste to get through all those walkers for almost nothing. I _did_ pick up a book to read, though! And Felix managed to cut his hair.”

Dimitri hummed. “Well, there’s that at least. I started a fire so maybe we can warm some beans up for us to share.”

Ditching his bag against one of the trees by said fire, Felix said dryly, “Yippee.”

He turned around to see Dimitri frown at him a little. Felix’s lips twisted unkindly. Sylvain, sensing tension, rubbed his hands together elaborately.

“I can read a chapter of my book by the fire for us while we cozy up, huh?” He grinned at the pair of them.

Felix looked at Dimitri a moment longer. Something about the way Dimitri watched him back made him seeth, the concern in his eyes and the small worried tilt to his lip, the everything else about him that made Felix flex his fingers again.

The silence grew uncomfortable, until Felix decided suddenly, “Three days. Then we finally move on again. With or without you.”

He sat himself on the cold ground, refraining the urge to shiver. The flames crackled. Sylvain blew out a breath.

“Alright,” Dimitri said. “Alright.”

The two of them joined Felix around the fire. They didn’t say much, and Sylvain read his chapter alone while they took turns chewing on the stupid baked beans.

Dimitri kept looking over at Felix as if someone else were sitting beside him.


	5. CHAPTER FIVE: AZURE MOON.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wasn’t Miklan, but he wasn’t exactly perfect, either.
> 
> No. Sylvain was far from it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER... HAS BEEN THE DEATH OF ME AND WORSE... it's probably one of the longest i'll ever write for this fic at a whopping 13k... AND it's sylvain's pov do u understand the pain. but no i enjoyed writing this even if i felt insane at some parts.
> 
> i call this chapter, thunder, trauma and transgenderism and i am absolutely spreading my trans sylvain agenda here and you guys have no choice but to accept it <3 and i am once again very exasperated by fodlan's geography please forgive me if anything seems incorrect pro tip i am so tired of staring at that damn map
> 
> on a more serious note, this is also one of the heavier chapters regarding content warnings. there is some mention of misgendering and a part where sylvain being closeted to everyone but his friends is talked about scattered around the middle of the chapter and a bit further along since sylvain's time at house gautier is mentioned. there's also slight mentions of cancer/smoking, more so in an offhanded manner more than anything because sylvain has terrible habits. additionally, this chapter also references and describes some of the abuse sylvain experienced that may be slightly vivid. this part starts with "He knew! He knew..." and ends with "Sylvain knew.". additionally, there's also a part where sylvain describes some violence his intrusive thoughts are encouraging him to imagine, starting with "You’re always the bigger man..." and you can carry on reading when felix speaks! there will be explanations of what was said in those parts in the end notes of this chapter! please stay safe, and also let me know if there's anything else you think i should tag <333
> 
> once again thank you to [sammy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupsofstardust) for their help editing this monster of a chapter, they are my one and only at this point <3
> 
> updates may slow over the next few weeks since i'm moving onto my uni campus soon and school will be starting up again bleh but i'll try my hardest to post updates on my [twt!](https://twitter.com/feIIstars)

“We need a map,” Dimitri said.

Felix hummed around his gulp of water, and when he swallowed he bit back, “We need a lot of fucking things.”

Dimitri didn’t mind him. He looked up at the road sign again, scratching his cheek. “I’ve only been to Charon once, and I was quite young. I’m afraid we might struggle navigating there.”

The sign read a few names; Fraldarius was an eighty mile trek away from just off the centre of Conand; Ailell, which was on Leicester grounds, just over two hundred miles; Galatea, which was sixty miles away; and then Charon was two-hundred and sixty-nine.

Under his breath, Sylvain said, “Nice.”

It was common knowledge that you needed travel documents to pass the borders around Fódlan, but luckily it wouldn’t be an issue for any of them now. To reach Garreg Mach and go beyond it to get to the Sealed Forest would mean possibly trespassing through either Leicester or Adrestia, depending on their bad luck that would likely keep them from finding an easy, disruption-free route along Faerghus borders to where the centre of Fódlan laid. Sylvain accepted the water bottle from Felix, bringing it to his lips. He thought as he drank. Well, Ailell was closer than Charon, but it was also hot as fuck and none of them were well-suited for high temperatures, with how familiar they were with the Faerghus cold. Snow was stuck to the ground of Gautier territory for more months of the year than it wasn’t, and if Sylvain was very honest he didn’t feel up for getting a terrible sunburn in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. While Charon was almost a hundred miles further away, it would also direct them to a more straightforward journey to Garreg Mach.

“How long is two-six-nine miles on foot?” Sylvain asked, offering the bottle to Dimitri.

Dimitri’s expression turned grim. “About twelve or thirteen days away by foot.” He took a few sips, swallowing. “It depends on our speed, and how many obstacles we face.”

From the curb where Felix sat, he scoffed. “With your ankle? Likely a few days longer.”

“It’s not so b—”

“You’re limping still,” Felix snapped. “We used all the meds we could, and even if Sylvain had to learn first aid for his lifeguard job when he was, what? Sixteen? It’s not enough to guarantee you won’t collapse somewhere down the road again.”

No one pointed out how it was under Felix’s firm insistence that they would depart the woods by the hostel so soon. Sylvain cleared his throat. “Sooo… I’m guessing Ailell is out of the question?”

“It wouldn’t be wise. We don’t have the appropriate clothes, let alone a good enough tolerance of heat.” Dimitri sighed, pushing his uncombed fringe back. He shifted his weight on his feet. “We could reach Galatea in half a week, more or less. If we find somewhere safe enough, we can try and search for more supplies in abandoned places and maybe sleep our travels off for a day or two. Until then, I’m afraid it’s just finding somewhere to catch a few hours of rest before carrying on in between.”

“Doubling back to Conand Town for some last minute raiding isn’t an option either. There’s just too many walkers suddenly,” Felix said as he redid his shoelaces. 

Dimitri nodded carefully. “Hopefully what we have on us right now will keep us going. I feel as though now would be the best time to begin stricter rations.”

Sylvain tipped his head back to look at the sky. The clouds were tailing them, dark with the looming promise of rain at some point. He looked back at the road sign and readjusted his pack on his back; he was being trusted with the tent today, with Dimitri grabbing the duffle bag from the dead woman from the hostel on his behalf. _CONAND TOWER - 25 MILES_ taunted him. Sylvain smiled tightly.

He heaved an elaborate sigh, clasping his hands ceremoniously. “Well, we’d better get moving. Unless we want to be caught in the pissing rain later and not have anywhere but the trees to hide.”

They assumed their walking pace again, silence settling. Sylvain wouldn’t have called it comfortable by any means, not with how hostile Felix always seemed towards Dimitri and how Dimitri took it like he deserved it. He walked in between them, Dimitri to his left, and Felix to his right, almost as though hoping his presence would be able to act as some sort of buffer, but he wasn’t holding his breath—not with how shamelessly furious Felix had been following the hostel situation. He had explained how that had all happened to Dimitri after the morbid ghost story he’d shared—watch started out solid, _definitely_ no grave-digging for a walker, the warmth of the flames promising him sleep, his unwillingness to wake neither of his comrades considering how exhausted they had looked after the long day, and how the next second there were walkers on fire and shrieking their heads off, jolting Sylvain out of his rest.

He didn’t tell Dimitri how the walkers’ screams sounded like Ingrid’s as the line between dream and reality blurred briefly.

Sylvain felt as though Felix calling him out for his stupidity was warranted. He _did_ almost get them all killed, but Sylvain did also end up prioritising Dimitri and Felix’s safety over his. Not that he was bragging about it, wearing that fact like a shiny badge on his chest—because he _wasn’t—_ but because he knew his loss would be less terrible than either of theirs.

He’d eventually become a deadweight, so if he managed to kick it for their sake before that time would come, all the better.

They followed the road just as they had before for the entirety of the morning, their boots scraping the asphalt being the most noise the three of them made. Felix had woken both him and Dimitri up at the asscrack of dawn, and Sylvain got a decent kick to his shin for mumbling something about _five more minutes_ before crawling out on their fronts to get a good whiff of the humidity in the woods. When they finished struggling with folding the tent over and tucking it into its bag, Felix began leading the way to the outskirts of the woods, the same route he had taken with Sylvain three days earlier to investigate the gas station, only this time they took a right instead of a left.

There had, indeed, been more walkers around than before. Sylvain wasn’t sure how long they had spent in Conand, but he knew it had been a few solid weeks. Even then, with each passing day the number of dead lingering around seemed to multiply, as they seemed to move from place to place just as the three of them did. More people were being eaten alive, Sylvain supposed. Some maybe starved. Others succumbed to the still freezing nights. But he was still here. Did that count for something? He decided he didn’t want to think of it.

“Hey,” he said, because he didn’t feel very willing to pace around his own head until someone else spoke up, which was an unlikely scenario in itself. “Anyone wanna play a game?”

Felix groaned. Dimitri smiled.

“Yes! That would be wonderful.”

“ _No,_ it wouldn’t be.”

Sylvain smoothly slung an arm around Felix’s shoulder. “D’awww, c’mon, Fe! Just a ‘lil something to pass the time. It’s a lotta walking!”

Gritting his teeth, Felix said, “I don’t care.”

“Mm, maybe it’s for the best. You would always get so competitive at I-spy.”

At that, Dimitri gave a small laugh. “I remember that! Car rides to camping were never a bore with all five of us.”

“Shut up!”

 _Five of us._ Sylvain remembered it too; Glenn sitting in the front with Rodrigue because he was the oldest, Sylvain in the back next to one window, Ingrid next to the other, with Dimitri and Felix sharing the centre seat. Glenn would joke that if the cops were to drive past, the middle two ought to have ducked to hide from their sight in case Rodrigue would get pulled over and fined for such a thing. The funniest thing was, whenever a cop car _did_ drive past, the pair of them nearly threw themselves to the carpet of the car in fear, leaving Sylvain and Glenn cackling while Ingrid sighed with a roll of her eyes. The tight squeeze between the four of them in the back often made silly games like I-spy that one bit more entertaining, with Felix often getting overly-mad about constantly getting the answer wrong and settling for punching Glenn in the shoulder hard for laughing, and _then_ kneading Sylvain in the gut for laughing, too. He missed that sort of ache, the hearty combination of the slight throb to his stomach at the impact of Felix’s knee, and the breathlessness in his lungs from laughter. The last time Sylvain had laughed anywhere near as hard had been that time in the pharmacy, when he had found Dimitri and Felix, which was quite a time ago in its own regard.

After Sylvain kissed Felix.

Now, Sylvain dug his fingers into the flesh of his arm under his jacket, embarrassed and feeling stupid.

He cleared his throat. “Well, I suppose we’re old enough to keep it civil?”

“You’d think,” Felix muttered, as if Sylvain weren’t targeting him with that statement.

“Should I start?” Dimitri asked, perhaps a little too excited about something so mundane. Not that Sylvain exactly blamed him, though. What else was there to find such simple joy in? “I spy with my little eye…”

Sylvain guessed _crow_ correctly. Dimitri guessed back _utility pole._ Felix huffed for a few rounds, claiming he didn’t care enough to pay proper attention, but Sylvain saw the slight glint to his eyes when he got _fence_ right. They spent a while walking down the abandoned road, musing aloud of things one of them could possibly spy and take note of, and for a second Sylvain almost felt at peace. They were all older, worn, alive when they likely shouldn’t be, but he felt a little more human, fighting over something as trivial as _I said fox first!_ rather than something terrible like _I didn’t steal the last medical supplies!_ The latter got him and Ingrid kicked out of the group they were travelling with. Ingrid didn’t talk to him for days after it happened.

Sylvain’s gut churned at the memory. “I spy,” he said, “with my little eye—”

What did he spy? One of them dying (hopefully him)? The three of them somehow surviving this raised hell? Injuries they wouldn’t know how to tend to, cutting their chances in halves, quarters, thirds? More survivors joining their group? A new norm they would be forced to endure and adapt to? Better yet, him waking up from some sort of coma after partying a little too hard at college, the past year and a half nothing but a prolonged dream? He wet his lips.

An abandoned truck.

“... Something beginning with _T._ ”

Too confidently, Dimitri said, “Tree!”

Felix scoffed. “Truck, idiot.”

Sylvain nodded. “Truck,” he said. The three of them approached it.

To spy the truck, they would also have to witness the blood on its front window, as well as the smashed in bonnet. Its bed was empty, and both doors to the truck were shut. Sylvain plucked his butcher’s knife from the side of his pack. He swung. The window, misted from the inside, didn’t budge. Sylvain went to hit at it again, puffing his cheeks. A slight crack formed. Sylvain went again, again, more cracks spreading. A rendition of a spider’s web cut through the glass. A final strike and it shattered, shards dusting both the asphalt at Sylvain’s feet, and the inside of the truck.

Sylvain stuck his hand through the window once he knocked out sharp bits of glass that still remained, feeling for the handle. Something groaned. It wasn’t any of them, nor the truck.

The walker lunged at Sylvain—or at least it _tried_ to before it got held back by the seat belt it had clipped in. Sylvain jumped back, hands raised in defence. “Haaaah... “ He turned to face Dimitri and Felix, both of which had their own weapons raised as the walker tried to claw at Sylvain from behind the wheel. “Phew! Close one, huh?”

Felix rolled his eyes. “Let the boar kill it. He’ll reach.”

Sylvain stepped aside to let Dimitri do so. The thing about Dimitri, Sylvain thought as he squinted at the walker inside, was that he handled his lance like it could do more than it was made for. He wasn’t sure how to describe it, but with the way Dimitri would sit outside during his watch shift, using some old cloth stuffed into the bottom of his rucksack to clean the sharp metal of the blade, it was almost as though he depended on it in more ways than one. Sylvain recalled how he mentioned that both he and Felix got their weapons from Lambert’s collection at the Fhirdiad house.

Dimitri grunted when he thrusted his lance through where the window had been, his force so great that when he impaled the walker, his lance went entirely through its skull and stabbed the glass of the opposing window. Sylvain’s eyes widened at his strength, watching as a similar web-like pattern appeared there. When he looked over, Felix only looked grim. Disgusted, even.

Swallowing, Dimitri tried to wriggle his lance free once the walker gave a feeble gasp as it slumped, with him raising one boot to rest it against the worn metal of the truck to help pull it out.

“Control yourself, boar,” Felix spat.

A muscle in Dimitri’s neck jumped. “I… didn’t mean to do that. I am sorry.”

As Dimitri managed to pull the lance out, stumbling back a little and hissing at the pain in his ankle, Felix shook his head. “You don’t mean to do a lot, and yet you still do it.”

Sylvain, hoping this wouldn’t turn into an argument, coughed into his fist. “Anyway… We ready to open the door? The sooner we get back on the road, the sooner we can resume our I-Spy game.” He grinned at the both of them, as though Felix weren’t looking at Dimitri with such smoldering hatred it sent chills down Sylvain’s own spine, and as if Dimitri weren’t gripping his lance with such a tight hold he feared it would snap.

He remembered when Felix would look at Dimitri like they were born to take the world by storm together, Dimitri instead pinching his sleeve and tugging him into a run at whatever forested destination either Lambert or Rodrigue had found for them all to camp at for a week. Often, Sylvain would try to worm his way into their games, despite him being older. He soon understood that while he was Dimitri and Felix’s friend, he wasn’t the same kind that they were for each other. Maybe that was _because_ he was older, if even by two years. Sylvain was just there when tears streaked down Felix’s cheeks at the sight of Dimitri’s back turned to face him. He accepted it, starved of much else, because even Ingrid didn’t find much interest in playing with him, instead keen to get involved in whatever the adults were doing.

He got no response, so Sylvain raised both his brows with an exhale. Jeez… Again, he shoved his hand through the smashed-in window, and when he felt the handle this time, he jimmied it so that the door would open. When he pulled it towards him, a shitload of fast food boxes and wrappers tumbled out, joined by some chunks of glass from before. Sylvain gave a low whistle.

“Man. Forgot McDonald’s was a thing in the midst of all the zombies, and killing, and fighting tooth-and-nail to see the next day,” he said mildly.

Felix wrinkled his nose. “I doubt there’s much for us here,” he said, peering in past Sylvain. “I’m going to pee.”

As he went, Sylvain told him, “Don’t fall into a ditch!” He would’ve laughed at being flipped off in response if the putrid smell of the walker hadn’t hit him then. “Fuck _me!_ Talk about forgetting to use air-con, huh?”

Dimitri, predictably, said nothing. Drumming his fingers against the metal door frame, Sylvain chewed on the inside of his cheek. He sighed, this time softer, more comical hopefully. He looked back at Dimitri.

“I’m guessing the honours fall to me?”

At that, Dimitri blinked, as though he hadn’t been present until Sylvain looked at him directly. “Oh. Oh, I could—”

He very clearly didn’t want to, with how he had paled suddenly, so Sylvain shook his head. “Sit in the bed of this bad girl, would you? Rest your ankle.”

“I couldn’t just sit idle while you—”

“Can, will. Sit, Your Highness. I’ll summon the servants with the grapes as soon as I ransack this baby.”

Dimitri pinkened at the nickname, sighing lightly as he hobbled over to do as he was told. When he was satisfied as the truck shifted under Dimitri’s weight, Sylvain turned back to face the truck. The walker was resting against the other window, jaw hanging open. Sylvain had grown to develop some sympathy for these fuckers, since the hostel. Not enough to hold back from stealing from their corpses and robbing them of their last remaining belongings, though. He took a large gulp of air, did a show of readjusting his gloves with making the both of them slap against his skin, and then slid in.

It stank. So fucking badly. Why didn’t Sylvain make Dimitri do this? Oh, right. The ankle. Lucky bastard. Sylvain pulled a face, shoving his hand into the pocket of the door, searching with his fingers for something worthwhile.

The seats were worn, and the dashboard was thick with dust that Sylvain had a feeling had been building up even before the apocalypse broke out. He thought it was cliché how there was a bobble head figurine of some hot chick there, too, but he supposed it was rude to judge the dead, so he didn’t say anything to the corpse beside him. 

“I never asked,” Sylvain projected his voice slightly so that Dimitri would hear, “how you know so much about directions.”

As he fished out a flask from among even more wrappers, this time from sweets, Dimitri called back, “Well, on top of camping and hiking with my father, I also became a Boy Scouts leader while you were away.” There’s a slight smile to his voice. Sylvain himself felt amused at the thought of the President’s son of all people in some cheesy uniform, adopting an even cheesier code name for kids to call him as they trailed after him with glee. “I enjoyed it immensely. I did it for one whole summer, when I was seventeen. The year after, my father wished for me to spend time touring Faerghus with him. I accepted—for a while he didn’t permit such a thing after the… Well, the assassination attempt.”

Sylvain nodded even though Dimitri couldn’t see him. He swirled the flask. Something at the very bottom of it responded with a quiet slosh. He opened it and sniffed. He shuddered, pouring the brown liquid out and onto the ground. “Not surprised. When that happened, it shook the whole of Faerghus. We nearly lost you, Glenn, _and_ the Pres.” His lips twisted as he put the flask aside onto the seat. For a moment he wondered if they would’ve all better off dying then, just so they wouldn’t have to witness the now. He didn’t voice it, though. Maybe Dimitri was wondering the same. “Felix was a mess. I remember I cycled over as soon as I heard to see him. All snot and red eyes.”

“Yes…” Dimitri sounded hesitant. “I recall how tightly he held me upon our return. He was… so very afraid.”

The glove compartment unfurled so that it revealed even more mess, and Sylvain began rummaging there. “He cried when I went off to college, too. Resident baby. Personally, I was touched.” He cringed when he touched something sticky, and he waved his hand to try to get some paper stuck to one of his fingers off.

At that, Dimitri breathed a laugh, hardly tangible. The truck creaked as he shuffled a little in the bed. “It was so long ago.”

With the paper finally flying loose, Sylvain flipped over the driver’s license hidden beneath the pack of cigarettes. It was certainly aged, the name worn beyond much hope to read it. Would’ve caused his dead friend beside him some problems if he ever got pulled over by the cops. He tucked it back in, but not without pocketing the cigarettes. 

“Time sure is fickle,” Sylvain replied to Dimitri a little belatedly. Dimitri said nothing else. He was probably lost in thought again. Sylvain let him be.

The truck didn’t have much else from this side to offer, and Sylvain glanced over at the walker. He would have to reach over the body to open the other door to search through the pocket there. He didn’t like that idea, even if a moment earlier he considered searching the walker’s jacket for a lighter. Sylvain grimaced. _C’mon, Gautier. Big boy pants on._ Half of him expected the walker to jolt awake again as he tried to hook his fingers at the handle. It didn’t, but with how Sylvain tried to desperately keep his distance anyway, he struggled to get a good enough grip to ease the door open. His fingers slipped, and Sylvain pulled his hand too far back, hitting the corpse. It fell back against Sylvain, who yelped loudly, feeling his skin crawl.

“Sylvain?”

He shook himself. “Fine! I’m fine, just… touched the dead guy… No biggie…”

“Do you need assistance?” The truck groaned again as Dimitri evidently moved to do so.

Sylvain huffed. “I promised you grapes, didn’t I?”

Hesitation. Then Dimitri sitting back on the bed.

He heaved a sigh, rubbing his arm where the walker came into contact with him. Squaring his shoulders, he tried hyping himself up, and as he went to reach for the handle again, the screech of metal scared him, and the vehicle lurched slightly with a sudden force from the same door Sylvain was losing a fight with. A silhouette appeared there, and a sharp sword point peeked through the top where the door frame met with the truck’s roof. Sylvain huffed.

“I had it covered, y’know?”

“Didn’t seem like it,” Felix shot back, groaning with his efforts to try and pry the door open. They _could’ve_ just smashed that window open, too, but they weren’t the cleverest bunch.

“You’ll bend your girlfriend.”

“My _what._ ”

Dimitri chimed in pleasantly, “I think he means your machete.”

Through gritted teeth, Felix applied more pressure. “I _know_ that, you lazy—”

Sylvain reached over to pull at the handle. The door swung open, and Felix fell back on his ass into the grass that thankfully softened his tumble. Sylvain, without thinking, allowed a snicker escape before covering his mouth. He decided to hell with it, now laughing hysterically. The truck wavered as Dimitri moved around in the bed.

“What did—Felix, are you alright?”

Felix, with his eyes slipped shut and cheeks very much ablaze, dripped with venom. “Oh, I’m fucking peachy.”

Sylvain, as though forgetting the walker somehow, shimmied from his seat over to the driver’s, jumping down to help Felix. He ignored the outstretched arm from him, which didn’t surprise Sylvain much, and he got up by himself.

“How’s that flat ass of yours, Fe?” Sylvain grinned.

“I’ll kill you.”

“Oh, I bet. I’ll just check the pocket here and we can go on our way. Came out dry.”

Trying to act nonchalant with how he stalked around the front of the car onto the road again, Felix snorted. “Told you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” 

No lighter resided in the driver’s door pocket. Sylvain pouted. He would’ve appreciated a smoke or two. He slammed the door shut, the sound cutting through the silence as Sylvain walked around the back of the car. Dimitri was sprawled out on the metal bed, head resting in the fluff of his blue, hooded jacket. Again, he looked absent, hardly registering the world around him and instead caught up in whatever swam in his head. He toyed with the watch on his wrist. Sylvain rapped his knuckles as he passed against the metal.

“Wakey-wakey,” he said, and when Dimitri blinked, coming to, he asked, “How’s the ankle?”

Dimitri wiggled his injured foot, wincing ever so slightly as he sat up. “I moved on it a little funny earlier, but it’s bearable.”

Thunder rumbled overhead.

From where he leaned against the side of the car, Felix commented, “We might have to find somewhere to take shelter, soon.”

Sylvain turned to look back at where they had come from. The sky seemed stormier from the little hours before. He ran his hand along his jaw, feeling his stubble through his woolen gloves.

“I reckon we can walk a little longer. No use waiting for it to come when it might not be here for a good few hours. Wouldn’t want to waste the daylight.”

Not even a half-hour later, it began to pour.

The three of them rushed to the greening trees, and as they stumbled over wet logs and nearly slipped on fresh mud, Sylvain fumbled with unzipping the tent. Setting up said tent was probably the hardest thing he had done since the apocalypse broke out, with the rain hitting them so hard, he felt his bones dampen and his whole body felt weighed down by his layers. It didn’t help how he spent too long arguing over where each pole went, with Felix gesturing madly and yelling over the thunder that mocked them, and Dimitri standing there, looking ready to be claimed by the soil beneath his feet. Sylvain wasn’t sure how long it took them to set the damn thing up, but once it was stable enough and Dimitri pegged it to the ground with the heavy heels of his boots, they all fought to cram themselves in.

The tent, needless to say, was not built for three grown men. When Dimitri zipped the tent shut after him, nearly falling into Sylvain’s lap as he did, they all spent the next few minutes panting and pushing their hair back from their eyes.

“Well,” Sylvain characteristically broke the silence, “guess we won’t need a bath anytime soon.”

Felix glared at him, and Sylvain shivered, though he felt as though that was more to do with the fact that even his _underwear_ was drenched. Normally he would snort at an innuendo such as that, but his skin borderline stung with how cold he was. He tried to shift so that he had his legs held to his chest, arms around them as he rested his chin on his knees.

Felix hissed, “This is your fault.”

Sylvain challenged, teeth beginning to chatter, “Literally _how?_ ”

 _“ I reckon we can walk a little longer!_ _”_ Felix did a terrible—in Sylvain’s humble opinion—impression of him.

“I do _not_ sound like that!”

“Do too!”

“Do not!”

Dimitri, who shivered violently in one corner of the tent, mimicked Sylvain’s position and said through gritted teeth, “I think… it would be best if we at least stripped our jackets and huddled together.”

The both of them stopped in their quarrelling. Felix opened his mouth, likely to refuse, but when the thunder clapped overhead, he clamped it shut. Muttering under his breath, he fumbled with unbuttoning his jacket, and Sylvain hurried to do the same. They all chucked their dripping jackets to the side, and Sylvain felt himself being shoved into the middle of the lousy huddle beginning to form.

“Oh yeah,” he said, trying to sound lighthearted. “This’ll do the trick.”

“Again, if you hadn’t said—”

Sylvain twisted to face Felix. Their noses almost touched. “Hey, who died and made me the weatherman? That’s on you for agreeing with me.”

“Can we _please_ not argue,” Dimitri sighed. As if the guy didn’t spend most of his time getting yelled at by Felix, too. “I do hope we won’t be forced to stay here for long…”

“If it comes to it, we’ll freeze to death. Now, isn’t that a way to go!”

Dimitri hesitated. “... I sense sarcasm…”

“Good fucking going, boar.”

Sylvain huffed. “Now, now, children. Things could be worse.” Which no person should ever say with confidence ever, _especially_ in the middle of a thunderstorm during a zombie apocalypse. What could he say, Sylvain liked to live on the edge and challenge whatever fucked-up God-with-a-capital-G might’ve sent this down on them. 

At that, Felix hummed. He rubbed his arms, trying to warm up. “Ingrid could be here yelling at us, too.”

In an instant, Sylvain’s throat felt awfully dry. Dimitri, none the wiser, laughed the smallest bit. “Well, it’s not the first time we got caught in a thunderstorm like this. When was the last time? We were both… twelve? It was at the Sealed Forest, too, actually. Do you both remember?”

Felix scoffed. “We got lost and ended up sitting under that massive willow. Ingrid was so pissed. She panicked, thinking we would die there.”

“Yes! Goodness, she was telling us off as if she were our mother. And then you got scared, too, and started crying—”

“I did _not—_ ”

“Oh, there’s no shame in it, Felix! Honestly, in a situation like that one, it was—”

“Fourteen,” Sylvain said suddenly.

Dimitri blinked at him, cut off. “Sorry?”

Slowly, Sylvain explained, “You, Felix and Ingrid were fourteen. I was sixteen. I remember, it was the last trip before Miklan got arrested.” _Ah, yes. Shifting the conversation from one person’s life you ruined to another’s. Genius in the making, Gautier._

Felix didn’t say a thing. Dimitri shuffled, either to keep his blood flowing or because he suddenly felt uncomfortable. Maybe both. “I remember now.” He nodded carefully. “Speaking of—Sylvain, after this storm passes, we will be—”

“I don’t mind,” Sylvain said, and he wasn’t sure if it was a lie. “You saw how many people ran out of the prison in Fhirdiad. Same thing probably happened here. He’s probably long gone. Dead, dead-dead, or trying to make it. Doesn’t matter to me.”

“It… is alright if it does, though,” Dimitri told him, and if it came from anybody else, Sylvain would have flushed in some sort of held-back rage at how condescending it sounded.

Sylvain closed his eyes for a moment. Was it alright? He sighed through his nose. “Never have I ever,” he began, lifting up one hand, “eaten dog food.”

A beat of silence. He cracked his eye open. Dimitri’s lip twitched. His hand joined Sylvain’s. Then, he put a finger down.

Felix, speaking for the first time since the My-Older-Brother-Is-Still-Evil-And-Fucked-Up discussion, said, “What.”

Flustered, Dimitri waved both hands now in some sort of defence. “I was very young! That was when we still had our old dog! Queenie! Sylvain dared me to try some of her food and—well!”

Sylvain howled with laughter, kicking his feet. Felix smacked his thigh to make him stop once he kicked up at the tent’s top. The rain wasn’t relenting.

“You’re so stupid,” he told Dimitri rather sincerely, and Sylvain was glad to see the slightest flicker of a smile as he said it.

“I—!” Dimitri attempted before sighing, looking away with pink cheeks. “Alright! Well! Never have I ever had sex!”

Another beat of silence. Only Sylvain put his finger down. He placed a hand on Dimitri’s shoulder.

“My guy, that’s not something to boast about, especially during a zombie apocalypse when it’s _very_ likely you’ll die a virgin.” Felix, honest to god, gave a gwaff. Dimitri turned redder, spluttering. Sylvain turned to look at the former. “I don’t know what _you’re_ laughing at. The same applies to you!” 

At that, Felix sobered, his own face darkening. He punched Sylvain in the shoulder, hard. Sylvain laughed some more. Okay. This felt familiar.

“Fuck you!” he insisted, and when Sylvain wagged his brows, he pushed his free hand against his face. “Shut up, my go. Never have I ever—did you just lick my fucking hand?!”

It didn’t take long to wear themselves out, and soon enough Dimitri and Felix were both snoring into Sylvain’s ears. He didn’t mind. They needed the rest. He probably did, too, but if he were honest, he’d admit he was scared of sleep. He hadn’t thought about Miklan properly in… well, some time. If he racked his brain hard enough, he could still hear his brother’s barking laughter, his shouting and swearing. Sirens mingled with it all. Sylvain shuddered, and Dimitri groaned slightly as he did, rolling over from Sylvain’s shoulder to his other side. Felix laid with his back to the both of them. Sylvain instead listened for the rain. It was falling in scarce drops now.

Sylvain liked the rain. It reminded him he wasn’t alone in his misery.

Miklan’s laughter began to ring in his ears, so he crawled out of the tent, unzipping the front slowly enough to not wake the snoring duo behind him.

The air smelt richly of wet soil. So much of their new reality reminded Sylvain of all those camping trips. It made it a little more bearable, like he could shut his eyes and pretend he was a few years younger, a little happier, before getting yelled at by Felix for standing around like a fool. Though, had he been happier? While Miklan made his life living hell, he was still young then; he did normal kid things, although maybe not as often as he ought to have, in the midst of watching his father cheat on his mother, and then trying to cover for Miklan when he came home drunk, or high, or both. That and being out only to your three childhood best friends and one of their brothers as a guy also limited the joy he could really feel in his own skin. _Sylvain_ , and _he_ , and words like _handsome_ shrivelled up outside the company of those closest to him, and something else followed him instead. Although, Sylvain couldn’t exactly say he felt any better at college. Sure, he was out, but also a serial romancer, resident douchebag and probably (absolutely) in need of professional help he never looked into. So maybe Sylvain had never been happy ever, not properly without the rush of euphoria being fleeting and nothing else. He supposed happiness in a world like this wasn’t much easier to come by, either.

Sylvain sighed. He could see the road if he squinted, darkened by the rainfall. In hindsight, while they did a good job of hiding in the trees, they probably ought to have been more sensible about keeping themselves aware of their surroundings. Could walkers open tents? Did they have that much brain capacity left? Sylvain was glad he didn’t have to wait to find out. 

He rubbed his hands together and blew into them. He would have considered putting his jacket on, but it was probably still too wet and wouldn’t do much to help warm him up. He opted for jogging on the spot to get his blood pumping again, before beginning to jog back and forth from the tent to just before the road. He did it a few times, trying to keep his mind occupied on something that wasn’t Miklan. Luckily, he was just as much of an expert on repressing anything Miklan related just as he was when it came to doing nothing but thinking about him.

The book he got from the gas station was decent. Trashy, but entertaining enough to keep him from banging his skull against some treebark from boredom. He had tried to take it slow with reading it, not wanting to finish it too soon, lest he would end up forcing himself to reread it over and over until he found another book to focus on. He would’ve snatched a few more to shove into his bag if he didn’t feel the need to keep room for other things, in case of an emergency. He had a bad feeling he would be stuck with this particular novel for some time. Better than nothing, he supposed.

Maybe they ought to have ran back to that truck and locked themselves in there after throwing the walker body out, but in their defence they probably would have ended up even more drenched. It certainly would have been warmer than the tent, though, and maybe they could’ve gotten the engine to run. Sylvain missed crappy car heating. A sudden thought struck him, and he jogged back to the tent, poking his head inside.

Felix and Dimitri were still out cold. Good. He separated their jackets, spreading them out at the entrance so that they could hopefully dry a little, and rummaged through the pockets of his own. He allowed a slight smile as he took out the box of cigarettes, still wrapped in its transparent, plastic covering which meant they were dry and ready for him to smoke.

He remembered that Felix owned a small, metal lighter.

Sylvain closed the tent again after taking out one thin cigarette, nicking the lighter, too. He put it in his mouth, his body settling back into some sort of autopilot as he shielded the flame of the lighter from the wind with his spare palm. The metallic _clink_ of the lighter was like bliss, but the first inhale? Hell.

He hated smoking. It had always just been something to do, and for a long time he pretended to enjoy it just to see how far he would have to go to piss his parents off. Apparently, it only pleased his father, and he regrettably spent several evenings smoking on the porch with him, trying not to pull faces at every puff. _Women shouldn’t smoke,_ he would say and for a moment Sylvain would hope, _but with you I can make an exception. You never spend time with me._ So maybe if he slept around with a few people, his parents would care. They didn’t, which frustrated Sylvain beyond belief, only received a few lectures about how it wasn’t very _lady-like_ of him, and how his _purity_ was something to keep close to him and be preserved, but as long as he would find a handsome, rich man in the end to have children with, it was fine. He only got warnings for slacking off at college, but he still had his pocket full of cash from the Gautier account at all times despite it. No matter what Sylvain would do, he couldn’t seem to get himself kicked out of the family. Though, he supposed he had a lot to compete with. Unlike Miklan, though, Sylvain wasn’t going to kill a man for it.

Lucky for him, his parents saw him being transgender as something that went above and beyond what Miklan put down.

If anything, smoking was just an old, bad habit that blew up in his face, reminding him how he couldn’t even get himself disowned on the first few tries let alone find much use for himself. Hell, he’d gotten used to it. Each day was the same; meaningless and fun in the most empty way possible. Wake up late, maybe go to class, maybe not, smoke some pot on the balcony (which, unlike nicotine, he actually could enjoy sometimes), go to the coffeeshop, lock eyes with a stranger or two, shove his tongue down their throat(s) and then fuck them.

People asked him if he minded the rumours. How they said he was a common whore, but a rockstar in the sheets despite it. How he picked up people’s hearts with clumsy fingers, and dropped them and made them shatter. How he was good-for-nothing, dense, two-dimensional, and everything else in between. Sylvain would just grin like a hound. Rumours were only rumours until they were true. How much of what people spread about him was just that, he felt unsure himself. He just knew he was a bad enough person to deserve each slap he got to the face, and whatever drink that would get thrown at him.

He wasn’t Miklan, but he wasn’t exactly perfect, either.

No. Sylvain was far from it.

“I didn’t know you smoke.”

Sylvain felt his shoulders tense a little as Dimitri’s voice reached his ears. He tapped the excess ash off the cigarette tip, still facing the road. “You gonna lecture me about cancer?”

A twig snapped quietly as Dimitri came over slowly to stand next to him. “I don’t suppose there’s much point, is there?”

Sylvain blew out some smoke. His mouth was starting to feel gross—grosser than usual, anyway. “Nope.” Silence fell once Dimitri nodded a few times. Sylvain offered him the cigarette. “Want a puff?”

“Felix would quite literally kill us.”

He shrugged. “Eh. Better than the cancer.”

“This is morbid,” Dimitri told him, accepting the cigarette carefully anyway to Sylvain’s surprise. Hell, if the dead could walk around like it was normal for them to, then he supposed Dimitri could smoke a cigarette, as a treat.

He laughed a little dryly. “What part of today’s world isn’t?”

Once he blew out smoke, Dimitri’s lips formed a thin line. “Touché.” He coughed rather violently. Sylvain pounded his fist into his back. “This is terrible.”

“Yep.”

“Where did you get this from?” He handed Sylvain the cigarette back.

Sylvain took a final puff before he put the cigarette out on the nearest tree, flicking it into the wet leaves. “Truck’s glove compartment. Whole new pack. The lighter is Felix’s.”

“Mm, I bet he’ll be glad he enabled us unknowingly, then.”

“Oh, overjoyed.” Sylvain caught his grimace. He reached to pat Dimitri’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, he’ll chew me out, too.”

“Ah, it’s not that,” Dimitri said. Sylvain hummed, encouraging him to elaborate. Dimitri shook his head. “Never mind. I did want to talk with you alone, though.”

“Well, you have me,” Sylvain said, deciding fuck it, he’d sit on the ground. His ass wasn’t exactly dry from the rain anyway.

Dimitri remained standing. “We can try and avoid Conand Tower, if you so wish.”

Not this again. Sylvain felt like massaging his temples. “Dimitri, my man. I really don’t care."

Dimitri considered him. “I think you do.”

Sylvain sighed, lolling his head back against the tree behind him. “I really, _really_ don’t. Like I said, he’s probably fucked off somewhere else. I have bigger issues than him.”

“He tried to kill you.”

He gritted his teeth. _Didn’t try hard enough._ “And? He got jailed for killing someone else instead. End of story. He’s not my problem. He wasn’t before, and he sure as hell isn’t now.” Lies had the same taste as truths to Sylvain. Maybe it was because he didn’t know the difference himself. Maybe it was the lingering taste of the cigarettes.

His words dissolved in the silence. Eventually, Dimitri said, “I see. My apologies for bringing it up.”

Sylvain waved his hand, dismissing his words. “You mean well. I appreciate it.”

Dimitri nodded. Sylvain moved his tongue around in his mouth, as though trying to scrub at his teeth and gums. He wished he at least had a wad of gum to chew and make the bad taste in his mouth go away.

“I won’t tell him if you won’t.”

He looked at Dimitri. “Huh?”

He shuffled his feet, smiling in a way that reminded Sylvain of the little, sneaky Dimitri that sometimes he or Felix or Glenn managed to coax out of the otherwise goody-two-shoes. “Felix. About the smoking. I won’t tell him if you won’t.” He sat down beside Sylvain, cross-legged.

Sylvain blinked. Then, he laughed. It sounded tired, but he liked to think it was a real laugh despite it. He pulled Dimitri close with a boyish air to him, making him duck down so the greasy blond hair on his head would get ruffled by Sylvain’s gloved knuckles. “Some sly bastard you are, aren’t you, Your Highness?”

Dimitri didn’t pull away, and his smile relaxed into something a little more genuine. “Learned from the best, Margrave.”

“Christ. It’s been a while since I heard that title.” Sylvain grinned, nostalgia blooming in his chest. It was probably the nicest feeling he’d experienced in a while. They both heard movement in the tent behind them, and as they turned they saw Felix’s disheveled head pop out. “Duke Fraldarius! Kind of you to join us.”

Felix squinted up at them, getting to his feet. He looked as though he was trying to find something intelligent to say in response to that, but his brain must have still been laced with sleep, because instead he said, “Wh… Shut up.”

Sylvain pouted, adopting a coo. “D’awww! Is ickle wickle Fewix still gwumpy fwom his wittle nap?”

He used the heel of his palms to rub his eyes. “I’ll kill you,” he promised him for the second time that day.

“You look like a sleepy kitten,” Sylvain told him. Dimitri looked away, as though trying not to laugh.

Felix embodied an expression that translated three question marks in a row. He opened his mouth to say something, then pulled a face, sniffing. “The hell is that smell?”

While Sylvain prided himself for being an excellent actor (read: liar, but he always insisted those words were interchangeable), he feared that Dimitri was lacking in that department, so he smoothly said, “Dimitri farted.”

Scandalised, Dimitri gaped at him. Sylvain just looked at him with an easy smile, as though to say _hey, I didn’t rat us out, did I?_ Felix huffed.

“No, that’s not—You guys are gross.” Felix bent down to rummage through their bags.

“Sorry, not all of us smell like roses,” Sylvain sighed dramatically.

Felix just hummed, not paying much attention. “Where did you idiots shove that tinned tuna?”

They settled down to eat, with the sky darkening as the hours latened. They agreed to spend the night here, since travelling in the night when it was still damp and wet from the rain would have probably caused more trouble than good. Dimitri, once again, emphasised their need for a map, and Felix told him they fucking know already, and then forcefullly shoved a plastic spoonful of tuna into his mouth to shut him up. Dimitri gagged. Sylvain cackled.

Not much chatter followed their feeble meal once they finished passing the tin around. Sylvain leaned back against a tree, this time using his jacket to cushion his ass and to keep it from getting wet again. They didn’t have a fire to cut through the quiet with its crackles since any wood used to light one would’ve been too damp. Sylvain hoped it wouldn’t rain again on the road tomorrow. If it would, then hopefully there would be a drier place for them to sit and wait it out. Knowing their luck? Unlikely.

Sylvain felt himself relax, even with how he felt a bump in the bark behind him dig into the back of his skull. It felt nice, until he felt a boot kick him in the knee. Sylvain jolted, opening his eyes when he hadn’t even realised he closed them earlier.

“Ow!” he complained, wincing.

Felix rolled his eyes. “Go sleep.” He cocked his head towards the direction of the tent.

Looking around, Sylvain asked, “Where’s Dimitri?”

“Went to piss.” Felix told him shortly. “Go sleep,” he repeated.

Sylvain heaved a sigh, running a hand through his hair as he pouted. “Mm. Means I gotta get up though.” His pout made way for a devilish grin. “Carry me?” He batted his eyes at Felix.

Felix scoffed. His voice suddenly hardened. Sylvain didn’t realise how it sounded almost soft before. Huh. “If you hold us back tomorrow when you pass out on the road, don’t count on me dragging your ass somewhere safe.”

This time, Sylvain rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.” He groaned when he got to his feet, joints popping. He shuffled slowly towards the tent. “‘Night.”

Felix gave no reply.

Next thing Sylvain knew, he was home.

The dining room looked exactly as it had the last time he had seen it, how long ago that had been exactly, Sylvain couldn’t tell, but it had been a few months before he got himself disowned. He never liked how House Gautier was decorated. It was too traditional-looking, lacking that modern touch that any Blaidydd house had. Floral shapes were painted in pale pinks on the wallpaper, and there was a dark wood cabinet with windows that showed fragile plates and bowls and jugs. His mother adored them. Sylvain thought they were atrocious. But it was the chandelier that bothered him most in the dining room. Who had chandeliers anymore? Over a place where people ate, no less? The Gautiers, apparently, but thankfully Sylvain didn’t belong to that name anymore.

In the dining room, he sat in his usual spot as he had for years. The surrounding chairs were empty, as was the table of any food. The only thing on it had been one of those frilly tablecloths his grandmother left behind after she had died. He stared at the shapes it made. More florals.

The door that led to the hallway opened. Sylvain looked over to see who had come through. His father. He didn’t say a thing, simply kept his head bowed as he read the newspaper in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other. He sat in his usual seat, too, to Sylvain’s left and at one end of the table. Sylvain didn’t speak. Neither did his father. This was normal. The door opened again. His mother came in. She was putting an earring in. She walked to sit on the other end of the table. She, too, said nothing. More people entered soon after her—two aunts Sylvain hadn’t seen since childhood, one uncle, his grandfather from his father’s side (wasn’t he long dead? Just as the rest of his grandparents were? Apparently not, because they all came and sat, too). Dimitri came through the door as well, followed by Felix. Ingrid walked in, too. No one reacted at all. They all took their seats, not acknowledging one another in the slightest. Sylvain didn’t understand.

Then, suddenly without any warning, everyone came to life. Everyone began to talk, and now the table was laden with food and drink. Sylvain watched as his mother listened to the gossiping of her sisters, as his father helped his grandfather light his own cigarette with the one he smoked, how Felix and Dimitri immediately sprang into conversation, with Ingrid leaning forward to listen. Everyone talked, but they all ignored him. He couldn’t say a word. Something was holding him back.

Sylvain only realised music, classical and smooth, had been playing once it abruptly stopped. His grandmother from his mother’s side jumped mid-sip when the door opened again, this time slamming against the wall as it did. The chatter ceased, and everyone turned to look at Miklan.

A pause.

Sylvain felt his brother stare right at him.

“So!” His voice sounded different. Practiced. “Who invited the sissy?”

Their mother clucked her tongue. “Be nice to your sister, Miklan.”

 _Sister._ Sylvain still couldn’t say a thing.

Miklan scorned exaggeratedly. When he stalked around the table to the only remaining seat left, Sylvain realised with a jolt that they were being watched. The lighting came from the edge of the stage that the table was standing in. Behind them sat an audience. Those in the front row had leaflets in their laps. Some wore school uniforms, teenagers coming to see a production for their studies as part of a school trip. A few had books open in their laps, as though following what was happening around Sylvain along in their copies.

Sylvain felt sick.

Miklan collapsed noisily into his seat. He pulled a plate towards him. It screeched. “Pass the potatoes.”

Sylvain saw his own arm move, as though jerked into motion by a string. He passed Miklan the potatoes.

He was in a play. He was in a play, and he was playing himself, and this was his life, except he couldn’t remember a time where all his family and friends sat at the table together. Miklan never even joined them for dinner to eat together. Not once.

Sylvain wasn’t able to speak unless it was his turn. His words felt like lines from a script; stiff and dramatic and faux. He watched as his hands picked his knife and fork up, slicing his chicken before he chewed on it. Everyone spoke like it was rehearsed. Miklan was loud, booming, snarky and rude, the obvious catalyst to whatever disaster would spur the plot on. Sylvain bit back to everything he said as a protagonist would. Felix, Dimitri and Ingrid whispered like the sidekick friends. Dimitri looked sympathetic when Miklan said something horrible, while Felix’s knuckles paled with how tightly he gripped his knife and fork, and Ingrid told Sylvain to keep it cool. Their parents chided them for their behaviours, but never really stopped them.

At one point, he had to flinch as his brother slammed his balled-up fists onto the table. The plates clattered. Sylvain rose, too, the chair squealing as it scraped along the wooden floor. They spat at each other, arguing. For some reason the chandelier dropped, smashing on top of the table. There were screams. Then darkness.

“You look exhausted,” Dimitri said. The sky was a little clearer than it had been the day before. “Let me carry the tent at least. You did yesterday.”

Sylvain shook his head, readjusting one strap of his rucksack. “Nah, I’m good. Honest.” He tried to grin convincingly. He wasn’t sure if it worked. He felt tired from his performance last night. Acting was harder to do now that he was conscious again. The world was his stage. He didn’t know what to think. “Let’s play I-Spy again.”

“Are we going to make this kids’ game a new habit? I’ll be sure to walk into the next horde of walkers we see.” 

Dimitri frowned. “That’s not very funny, Felix.”

Felix said, “Good thing I’m not your personal court jester, then.”

Loudly, Sylvain insisted, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with _D_.”

Felix groaned, long and suffering.

Their clothes were still damp, but they had little choice to do otherwise if not wear them. They couldn’t waste time sitting around waiting for a strong enough sun to rise. Although, it wasn’t like they had a deadline for anything. It wasn’t as though the world now had a ticking time bomb above it, counting down to doomsday. Was this not doomsday enough? Maybe it was, but just a doomsday with a lowercase _D_ until a Doomsday with an uppercase _D_ came about. Sylvain didn’t like that idea. Would he have felt better if he knew how the situation was really holding out? If he could sit on the broken couch of his shitty studio apartment he managed to rent for funny money once he got the boot from House Gautier, watching the news channel with his windows and doors boarded up, just in case the dead knew how to use elevators?

He looked over at Felix. His hair was falling out of his bun, some strands of it falling into his eyes. He was trying to guess what Dimitri had spied. His face was terribly neutral, and Sylvain processed his monotone voice without listening to his words. Bags had formed under his eyes, just like they did for the rest of them. Dimitri walked on his other side, seeming too pleased with how Felix couldn’t guess what he was spying. With each shake of his head and disagreeing hum, Felix sighed more, growing grumpier.

He felt him stare. His brows creased together, and his lips pulled back into a scowl. “What.” He turned his head to look at him.

Nah. Sylvain thought this was better.

“Utility pole,” he said.

Dimitri clapped his hands, the sound muffled by his gloves. “Yes!”

Felix pulled a face. “What. No, we had that yesterday. No repeats.”

“Dude. If we don’t have repeats we’re gonna run out of things to spy. You’re not gonna see much more than what we’ve already spied,” Sylvain pointed out.

Crossing his arms over his chest, machete pointing towards Sylvain, Felix looked unimpressed. “That’s stupid. Why didn’t anyone tell me we could do repeats?”

Either Sylvain was horribly sleep-deprived, or Felix was getting genuinely huffy over this. Sylvain shook his head, raising his hands peacefully. “You can have my go since you didn’t know.”

“I don’t want your go!”

“Felix, it’s just I-Spy.”

“Whatever.”

“I could go again if—”

“No!” Felix snapped. “I spy with my little eye—”

He came to a stop, looking ahead. Sylvain and Dimitri mirrored him. With all their bickering, they didn’t notice the upcoming barriers that were down before some train tracks. More cars had been abandoned on the road they followed, and they decided to be picky with which they would stop and try their luck with, but the one crushed under the first barrier had its roof smashed in. On the threshold between the tracks, walkers wandered aimlessly around, bumping into each other. Beyond all of that, Sylvain could spot the first few buildings not too far ahead, likely what was left of Conand Tower. Sylvain hadn’t realised they’d been walking for that long.

They made their way over, and Sylvain tried to count the heads loitering around the tracks. Six… Seven…? No more than eight; they could take them. Sylvain groped the side of his rucksack for his knife. He didn’t want to risk the gunshot stirring the interest of more dead in the trees that they might not have seen. He saw Felix and Dimitri ready themselves, too.

No words were exchanged. Sylvain understood that before he had joined them, Felix and Dimitri had their own routine littered with techniques they had perfected and strategies that they juggled picked out for every battle, and Sylvain had to focus to absorb it all. After maybe—what? A month?—he’d like to say he was getting into the swing of things. He was sure Felix wouldn’t agree, but it beat how disorganised and disjointed Sylvain’s fighting style had been at the gas station. He also learned since that Felix is perfectly capable of taking care of himself, no longer the sniffly kid he recalled coming up to him for comfort when they were younger. It didn’t stop Sylvain from glancing in his direction though.

Sylvain had also gotten into the habit of blocking out the gore. It wasn’t that he was sensitive to it, because honestly by then he was almost _de_ sensitised to it, but more so he hated the guilt he carried after walking away from a few limp bodies of people who ought to have died long ago. He didn’t want to kiss his own feet for what he did, calling himself a saviour for ending the misery of the walkers that were forced to drag their feet around as though in some sick purgatory, but did this classify as murder? Was he killing? To kill something would mean that it would have to be living first. Walkers were a mix of both the deceased and those who lived—they just lacked all things that made them human besides what Sylvain assumed was hunger. There wasn’t much else he knew about the walking dead. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to expand on that knowledge.

He skidded under the barrier with dramatic enthusiasm, the ground there caked with mud that helped him along. He swung an arm, swiping an unsuspecting walker off its feet with a surprised gasp, one that got cut off with the hard impact of its skull against the rails. Sylvain stabbed. 

“Why can’t you just be normal?!” Felix shouted over his shoulder once Sylvain got to his feet. His pants shone with the mud. Excellent.

“That was epic, what do you mean!” Sylvain yelled back, turning to lodge the butcher’s knife in some more brains.

He wished he had a lance like Dimitri. He had practiced with one when he was younger, handed to him by Lambert whenever he came over to hang out with Felix and Dimitri at House Blaiydydd. He probably wasn’t as good as Dimitri was now, considering he hadn’t even _held_ a lance, let alone swung one about, in years, but he felt like even if he had, he wouldn’t be able to be any match for the President’s son.

Dimitri killed like a man possessed.

He saw it develop over time as he fought side-by-side with him. At first, Sylvain hadn’t noticed such a thing, but he realised at some point that Dimitri had likely tried to hold back, as though not to scare Sylvain away. Sylvain could understand the sentiment; Dimitri was terrifying. _Boar_ was now a nickname that made sense. But to use it against Dimitri… Sylvain felt as though Felix was wrong for it. Then again, Sylvain knew there was more to what Dimitri had told him by the hostel, something that drove Felix’s spite still, something that he wasn’t aware of, so for now he would keep his opinions to himself.

But while Sylvain was just finishing up with one walker, Dimitri was already done with three.

They spent some time going back to the smashed-in car, hoping to find something. Nothing but a human corpse, rotted differently from the way the walkers were. Sylvain supposed whoever was sitting in the driver’s seat died on impact. He might have envied them.

Sylvain climbed out of the passenger’s seat. “Nada,” he said.

Felix turned to face the rest of the road that stretched itself towards Conand Tower. On the other side of the barrier, Sylvain could spot a sign, illustrating a fork-road separating off into two parts. Sylvain didn’t have to read the words printed there to know that one led to Conand Tower Prison. He ducked under the barrier again to stand on the tracks. Gravel crunched under his boots. Felix eyed Dimitri with disgust.

Dimitri kept his distance, and Sylvain noticed how he stared at the walkers.

He looked up at them both, as if only just remembering he wasn’t alone. “These are prison uniforms,” he told them, pointing.

Sylvain had hoped no one would bring it up. He walked across the tracks and ducked under the other barrier. He lost his glasses long ago, so to read what the sign said he would have to come closer. “Well,” he said, his words feeling heavier than he intended them to be. “Their home isn’t too far away.”

_CONAND TOWER PRISON - 3 MILES._

_CONAND TOWER TOWN - 9 MILES._

“Hmph. The town is a few hours longer walking.” Felix was by his side, reading, too.

Dimitri’s voice was coming closer. “My concern is not finding somewhere to stay the night at once we get there. It might be too risky to stay in a town to sleep.” He was fiddling with his watch again.

Sylvain heard himself say, “Then we raid the prison and stay the night there.”

No one said anything, as though waiting for Sylvain to laugh stupidly and say _just kidding!_ Sylvain didn’t. He was probably more surprised about that than the others. Dimitri cleared his throat.

“Sylvain, are you sure…? It could be a lot of walkers to get through, and—”

“No,” Sylvain said. He shook his head. “It’s one of the smallest prisons in Faerghus. No more than a hundred or so inmates. And if these guys escaped then chances are a few of their buddies did, too.”

He remembered how the bright laptop screen made his eyes ache with how dark his bedroom had been when he read up on it. His gut did flips the same way it did now. Only this time, Sylvain felt no guilt. He tore his eyes away from the sign.

“So? Are we game?”

Felix narrowed his eyes at him. Sylvain held his gaze with a smile.

“Whatever,” Felix said, looking away and wiping his machete on his pants. “As long as we don’t get ourselves killed.”

Dimitri hesitated. “If at any point you wish to go back, do not hesitate to say so.”

Snorting as he began to walk again, Felix said, “It’d be too late for that.”

They didn’t play I-Spy on the walk to Conand Tower Prison. Sylvain fought off the walkers they encountered with a new wave of adrenaline. None donned in the prison uniform were Miklan. Sylvain wasn’t sure if that ought to have been comfort. He had spent the last day dismissing any possibility of seeing his brother again to Dimitri, because, well, what were the chances? But then again, Sylvain didn’t stumble into just one childhood best friend in all this mess, nor two, but three. If fate existed, it did so to torture Sylvain. He knew he deserved it, but he thought it was all a little much by now. Then again, seeing as some inmates had clearly escaped, who’s to say Miklan hadn’t either? Sylvain knew for a fact that he would push through anyone he needed to in order to escape, sacrificing whoever he needed to in order to get a pass out, so if anything he probably wasn’t at the prison anymore. If he tried killing his own brother, then he certainly wasn’t above staining his hands with more blood.

Sylvain had blood on his hands, too. Blood from walkers. Maybe even Ingrid’s. Maybe he was no better than the brother he swore off as anything other than shared blood.

Conand Tower Prison was run-down. Sylvain recognised it from the photos he had seen online, but the whole place looked exactly as though it was ravaged by its own inmates who stopped at nothing to escape it when the dead came to life. The gate, heavy and massive, was wide open, some of it hanging off its hinges. Dimitri’s shiver didn’t go unmissed as they passed through it. Some bodies—unmoving and dead-dead—laid across the ground. The secretary behind the desk moaned and writhed, and Dimitri put it to rest.

The prison was near-empty. As they walked through the halls, they could see some walkers drifting outside in the yard, but nothing to cause discomfort. Lucky them. Some cells were still locked, and the walkers that sat there roused with interest as the three of them passed by. They had probably starved, long ago. If they were anything like his brother, they probably deserved it.

“Let’s stick together for the time being,” Dimitri was the first to speak. “If we find it fit, we can split up and get rid of the rest hanging around by themselves.”

Felix nodded once. Sylvain said nothing, but they knew he understood.

The yard stank the same way that truck had the day before, but worse. A small group of walkers stood facing the wall and had their backs to them, so they opted to kill those first. Sylvain tried to not look at their deformed faces, but he was only human. None of them were Miklan, but they looked just as mean and wretched as he did. Sylvain swung his butcher’s knife with more vigour than he intended, unflinching as blood splattered on his front, a little on his face.

They moved quickly, with Dimitri nearly tripping over a body that flies found appealing, and Sylvain heard Felix retch a little at the sight of guts spilling out of the torso. The head was smashed in. They were human, never given the chance to turn. They cleared one section of the yard out quickly enough, spending more time trying to find more walkers they knew were still around.

Sylvain took out his shotgun. He pointed it at the ripped open body and shot.

“What the _hell!”_ Felix hissed, looking ready to skin him,

Sylvain only raised a hand, as though to silence him. Dimitri and Felix stared at him. Then shuffles and groans became louder as more walkers turned a few corners to investigate them. Without saying anything, Sylvain turned to split off from the group to meet some. This one wasn’t Miklan. Neither was that one, nor the one clawing at air for Sylvain after it. Sylvain was three strikes of his butcher knife, a grunt and duck, then four strikes more. No one was watching him. His audience were no longer there.

“Don’t—” he gruffed, slicing the top of a skull clean off, “—bother haunting me!”

The walker only gave a breathy whine in response, and dropped.

Sylvain panted, spinning round slowly to gather his bearings. He wasn’t sure how many walkers he went through alone but it was more than he ever thought he could take without any help. He swore softly. Then again, harsher, and struck the butcher’s knife against the brick of the wall behind him. The blade flew off, narrowly missing Sylvain’s ear by an inch. He shut his eyes, shaking slightly as he held his hand in the air. When he opened them, he tried to look for the sharp edge. He ended up throwing the handle onto the roof of a security box, swearing some more. He grabbed his gun again and counted the bullets. He had one other clip in his bag if he recalled correctly, but in his gun there were only three more bullets. He didn’t want to waste them, not after he went through so much trouble to steal this gun in the first place.

He sighed, forcing himself to walk through the rest of the yard. While Sylvain knew it was smaller than most prisons, Conand Tower still had a decent yard for its inmates to mingle in. When he walked away far enough, he couldn’t hear Felix yelling at Dimitri anymore. He considered shooting one of his bullets to attract more walkers, but he probably couldn’t risk that without getting overwhelmed. He didn’t want to end up with no time to grab more bullets. So, he settled for holding the shotgun snugly in his grip, alert as he trudged around.

So Miklan was gone. Fine. That was what he hoped for, wasn’t it? He didn’t know. He avoided thinking about it so much he hadn’t really considered what he wanted out of this situation. He couldn’t imagine finding his brother alive and willing to join his small troop, though. Not without the intention of killing Sylvain in his sleep, anyway, but Miklan wasn’t one for patience. At least Sylvain had the comfort of knowing that if Miklan ever saw him, he’d made sure he knew, barrelling towards him with only his fists if he had to.

Sylvain kicked a stone, sending it flying a few feet away. He heard it clang against the metal of the fence there. He turned to doubleback and regroup with Felix and Dimitri. Before he could, he heard a groan. Sylvain sighed through his nose, exhaustion catching up with him, but when he faced the walker that had made its presence known, he stilled entirely.

His red hair was the same, long, untamed and dirtied, and although his eyes were milky, Sylvain could still see the brown hues beneath the pale layer. It was the scar that promised him it was Miklan, though. Ugly, pale, and stretched diagonally from his forehead to his left cheek. He looked dead. But he wasn't. Not really. Sylvain nearly dropped the shotgun as he felt his whole body weaken.

Miklan moved slowly, as though waking up from a nap. He laid awkwardly on the ground, and a small sliver of his back rested against the fence. Only a small sliver, though, because just off the centre of his stomach, a bent part of the fence impaled him there, trapping him in the yard. Over the fence led a way out. Nobody was in a hurry to save Miklan, once he probably used his strength with the rest of the inmates trying to pry the metal off. He probably managed to climb halfway up before being shoved off. He must’ve fallen onto the sharp point of it.

Sylvain managed to step forward a little. Miklan blinked up at him, bleary and subdued for a moment. Then, as though his sight focused on Sylvain, he suddenly stirred, breathy groans giving way for throaty snarls, as though recognising him. Sylvain stopped and stared, watching as the broken body of his brother still tried to get his hands on him even when he was half-dead. Miklan tried to grab for him, but Sylvain stood too far away for the idea to even seem tangible.

He felt his lips tremble into a grimace.

_Leave him be. Let him rot. Let him suffer. Don’t bother with him._

_He’s my brother._

_He tried to kill you._

_But I can’t just leave him like this. No one deserves this._

_He tried to kill you._

_I know._

_He tried to_ kill _you!_

He _knew!_ He knew, he remembered waiting for Glenn and Felix outside the store when they were waiting in line to buy something. He remembered not doing anything, nothing at all, just scrolling idly through his phone, to warrant the sudden grab at the collar of his shirt, how Miklan peeled him away from the wall he was leaning against before throwing him into the concrete. He remembered how Miklan smelt like alcohol, how he smiled at Sylvain the same way he always did before having his fun with him. Excited. Amused. Vengeful. He remembered the kick to his ribs, sharp and sudden but expected, too. He remembered how he nearly threw up with the pain, feebly trying to kick Miklan off before resigning and curling up into a ball. He remembered how Miklan grabbed him by one of his wrists when he tried to cover his head protectively, the blow to his stomach when he was punched and how this time he _did_ throw up, stumbling backwards as Miklan cackled, He remembered how people stopped to stare, unsure of what to do. Sylvain didn’t remember, though, the flash of the blade Miklan had dug out of his pocket, but he remembered the man who had come between the brothers at the wrong moment, how blood leaked down his nice shirt when Miklan stabbed him hard. He remembered someone helping him up when his legs gave in—Glenn—while Felix watched with wide eyes. He remembered how the police took Miklan away, and how the man who had saved his life died that same night.

Sylvain knew.

_I… I have to be the bigger man._

_You’re_ always _the bigger man, just leave him alone, let him rot, let him rot, let him rot, let him hunger for his own death, let him cry out in pain, step on him, make him sink lower, make him feel the same pain he made you feel and worse, rip his limbs to shreds, slit his throat, carve his chest away, pull out his heart, feed it to birds, make him understand what he did to you and how you still have those same fucking scars from where he almost got you too many times before, you’re already no better than him, you never were, and he would do the same to you so why not indulge yourself in the pleasure of doing it back, why not, Sylvain, why not, why do you still pretend you’re worth something, worth more than your brother, better yet stab yourself on that stupid fence and rot along with him, it would be so easy, so sweet, exactly what you deserve, exactly what should happen, what will happen, go, move, do it do it do it do it do it you absolute coward do it—_

“What’re you loitering around for?”

Felix. Sylvain wanted to cry out for him. He didn’t.

“Did you find something?”

Sylvain’s hand shook. He raised the shotgun. “No,” he said with a too-steady voice, and he cocked it. “Nothing at all.”

The growling stopped, and Miklan stilled, and for the first time in months, Sylvain heard a bird sing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding the description of abuse Sylvain experienced: Sylvain describes the time Miklan got arrested. He was waiting outside of a store waiting for Glenn and Felix to come out after paying, scrolling on his phone, when Miklan unexpectedly grabbed him and started beating him up for no apparent reason. He was likely drunk, judging by the stench of alcohol he had to him. People on the street stood watching, unsure of what to do, until a man tried coming between the brothers to deescalate the situation. He did this at the same moment Miklan got his knife out to try and stab Sylvain, consequently stabbing the man instead. Sylvain recalls Miklan being restrained as police arrived at the scene, just as Glenn helped Sylvain to his feet once he and Felix came out. Miklan was taken into custody, and the man who tried to help died that same night from his wound.
> 
> Regarding Sylvain's intrusive thoughts: Sylvain is angry at himself because he had always acted like the bigger man in situations involving his brother. His thoughts encourage him to leave the walker that was once Miklan impaled by the fence for him to suffer, since walkers cannot die unless their brains are destroyed. His thoughts are graphic, encouraging him to be as violent as possible since Miklan 'deserves' such treatment, only to spin the violence onto himself by insisting Sylvain is no better than Miklan and should join him at the fence. The voice is insisting and calls Sylvain a coward, just as Felix comes over to check in on Sylvain, snapping him out of the intrusive thoughts.
> 
> Hope this is helpful! If any corrections are in order, please let me know <3 Stay safe!!


	6. CHAPTER SIX: AZURE MOON.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix didn’t know much about walkers, but what he was rather confident in was the fact that they couldn’t sing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK CHAPTER SIX WOOO
> 
> so sorry it's been like. idk almost two months since the last chapter but i started uni and i've been so caught up in the whirlwind that is education that i haven't had time to sit down and properly write. SO! here is chapter 6!! as far as content warnings go, there's an incident with a gun, but it's non-graphic! there's also vague references to almost drowning, mentions of past abuse as well as hints of past transphobia from family so please read with care! otherwise, i think that's everything but once again let me know if there's something else anyone thinks should be tagged!
> 
> thank you to [sammy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupsofstardust) for editing <333 i love u 
> 
> not sure when chapter 7 will be up but know that i'm excited for it and if all goes well it will be up sooner than this chapter has been :D
> 
> thank you so much for the kudos and hits, please keep them coming and please leave comments they are so helpful for the insecure writer brain <3 until next time!

They stayed in the prison for two nights instead of one. They didn’t spend much longer trying to wipe out all the dead they could, and soon enough they made their way to scavenge, instead, for a few cells to finally sit down again. Dimitri had hissed with pain, clutching at his ankle once he had slid down to sit on the ground, and Felix threw his pack at his feet, silently telling him to shut up by looking for some sort of painkiller. It had been too late, as they had predicted, to go to town to try and salvage some goods that might have remained there, so they ended up sitting around a small, controlled fire. Sylvain had lit it, once Felix had patted himself down for the lighter only to have found it missing.

He had pulled a face. “Where’s—”

Sylvain fished the lighter out of one of his own pockets and thumbed it open. When Felix had raised a brow, Sylvain replied simply as he lit the fire, “Fell out of your jacket back at the tent.” Felix only huffed, sticking his palm out to take it back.

They ate, deciding around slow chews that it was safe enough to miss out on someone staying up for look-out. No one would be as stupid as them to waltz into an abandoned prison. Or, at least they had depended on it, all of them too exhausted to offer being first watch. They all went into their own individual cells, and Felix had almost expected Sylvain to make some dumb joke by pretending to lock one of them in a cell, knowing damn well they would never find the key. He didn’t, and only mumbled a weak  _ goodnight  _ before retiring to the cell he had claimed as his own. Felix had spent more of that time staring up at the ceiling than actually sleeping despite the exhaustion that had burrowed into his bones and called them home, and judging by the sudden sullen look to Sylvain the following morning that not even his best, most practiced smiles could chase away, he hadn’t slept too well either. Despite that obvious truth, he still grinned stupidly and cracked even stupider jokes. He couldn’t fool Felix though.

Felix had seen Miklan’s body.

Sylvain said nothing, so Felix didn’t bring it up. What was there to say?  _ I’m sorry for your loss?  _ If anybody had tried telling that to Felix about Glenn in today’s world especially, Felix would’ve wrung their neck with no hesitation. And Felix wasn’t a pathological liar like Sylvain was; he wouldn’t say he was sorry for the loss, because he hated Miklan’s guts almost as much as Sylvain did. He had seen the way Sylvain was shaking on the concrete outside the store that afternoon, how beaten up he had been with blood and vomit down his chin and sobs hiccuping through his chest. He had seen the blood trickling down the man’s front, staining his shirt red, and he had seen how Miklan threw his head back with barks of laughter. When Mr and Mrs Gautier had arrived at the crime scene, they were calm, and all they did to comfort Sylvain was pat his head stiffly until he ducked from under their touch and scampered over to Glenn’s side. He had clung to Glenn, afraid, and Felix remembered not knowing what to do. When he had offered his hand to him, though, Sylvain held it in a deathgrip that was so tight, Felix feared his fingers breaking. They hadn’t, by some miracle, cracked in the desperation. Instead, he found out that two of Sylvan’s ribs were broken, and that Miklan was in police custody, and that the man who had come in between them had died the same night.

Felix didn’t realise how much the truth behind Sylvian’s bruises had made sense until he saw them at the hospital while visiting him with Dimitri and Ingrid. How they stained his skin, purpleing the tanned skin there, covering up freckles. How the black eye Sylvain had developed overnight looked identical to the few others Felix had seen ink his face. Only this time, Sylvain didn’t try as hard to smile through it with a dismissive hand waving their concerns off.

“How’s Miklan?” Rodrigue would ask to be polite whenever Sylvain had turned up to House Fraldarius, most of the time uninvited. ‘What’s he up to these days?”

Sylvain would shrug, and nearly smile. “Beats me.”

It made sense.

The memory brought a bitter taste to Felix’s mouth. He was only sorry to lose out on the opportunity to spit on Miklan’s corpse. He was sorry he couldn’t do worse.

Dimitri hardly ever slept. Felix knew that, but he didn’t care for it. He had heard the amount of times he would wake from nightmares that Felix wouldn’t dare rouse him from still. At first, all he had heard were cries of  _ Father!  _ and that was still early on in the outbreak, when Felix could still call Dimitri his friend and shake him awake. As time passed,  _ Glenn  _ would be wailed in his sleep, too. And then  _ Rodrigue.  _ Felix would grit his teeth each time, until he learnt how to block the sound of Dimitri’s weeping out. He didn’t have a right to weep, let alone to dream of either of them.

If Felix wished to uphold the illusion that he hated Dimitri, he would say it’s because the man deserved to face his worst terrors instead of meeting with peaceful sleep. If Felix were honest though— 

It didn’t matter. A boar was a beast, and a beast was what Dimitri was. Nothing else.

He looked over at him, how he stared ahead as he listened to something Sylvain was saying. Felix didn’t know what they were talking about; he had tuned out of the discussion early on. Neither of them probed him because they knew better. Dimitri did, anyway. It took a few weeks for Sylvain to fully catch on, but Felix saw how he would watch him sometimes, as though unsure how he could have changed so much since they last saw each other. Felix was hardly any wiser. All he knew was that Glenn got bit and died in his arms, and that his pathetic old man thought it was the epitome of honour. He went and walked himself into the same damn fate to prove it.

“ _ Honour?!”  _ Felix remembered snarling, fisting his father’s clothes. Rodrigue said nothing. Felix’s lip quivered with rage, and grief, and something else. “There is no honour in death! You just fucking  _ stop!” _

Honour because his brother died for the son of a dead President of an even deader country. His father was a whole new breed of insane, and Felix didn’t care to entertain any of it for even a second.

Felix kicked a rock and it flew into the greenery on the side of the road, suddenly angry. So, he felt angry. So what? He liked to pretend he didn’t care about jackshit, but when Felix started thinking, it was hard to stop, and he’d be in a sour mood for days because of it. So what? He didn’t owe anyone anything, least of all some sort of cheer in a life like this.

Dimitri turned his attention to him with genuine, stupid concern plastered on his face. “Felix? Are you alright?”

Are you alright? I killed your brother whom you loved more than life and anything it could offer. I made you despise your father and then I killed him, too. I’ll kill you next and I’ll just droop my head in shame and do nothing else. Are you alright? You don’t speak to me without venom dripping from your tone. You can’t look at me properly most days if at all, and when you do it’s with all the disgust in the world. Are you alright? Your best friend is no longer your best friend, but a monster. You lost me, too. I killed myself just as I killed everything else. Are you alright?

“Dude, you’re shaking,” Sylvain pointed out. Felix hadn’t noticed. He just kept staring at Dimitri.

Claws disguised as hands reached for him, and Felix recoiled. He tightened his hold on his machete. The claws fell to Dimitri’s side again, and he swallowed, looking away. Shame. Guilt. Self-loathing. It was almost as though the boar was in love with his own misery. Felix scoffed, lips curling into something mean.

He readjusted his pack on his shoulder. He looked back at the streets. Galatea was quiet. He supposed the border would be. People either went one way or the other. The shops laid abandoned, and some windows of the flats above then still had open windows. Sylvain proposed the idea of ransacking a few if they could spare the time. Dimitri said maybe. Who made him leader? That was what made Felix put them both on mute. He began to boil his own blood thereafter, thoughts tracing back to things he had locked up ages before. He had to find stronger chains and keep the lid on for this again. Thinking about the dead wouldn’t keep him from the same fate. If only Dimitri racked his skull for logic instead of whatever bullshit this was. How much better things would’ve been. Or not.

Wildlife was starting to make an appearance. Spring was fully kicking in now, and that showed with the more frequent showers of rain and the too many times they had been caught in them, just as they had been right before Conand Tower. Nature was slower than Felix ever remembered it being, or maybe it was just because the half-week they had spent travelling felt more like a month, thus the reason for the still bare trees and patchy grass. Galatea’s park was large and government-protected, and it looked no livelier than the woods the roads the three of them trekked through did.

While in childhood they tended to either stay at the Blaiddyd or Fraldarius houses, the handful of times Felix had been to Galatea were distinct. Ingrid always dragged them out to the park he was staring at now. They would make dens out of logs and fallen branches, playing pretend, forgetting reality and declaring their shared fantasy worlds as the new real life. They had all wished it had been. It had rabbits and deer, both of which the four of them would watch in rounded awe, hushing each other as to not startle them until Sylvain would get the bright idea of trying to chase one of the rabbits, thinking he could outsmart them. Felix would cry, worried about both Sylvain and the rabbit getting hurt, and Ingrid would yell at Sylvain for being stupid, and Dimitri would try to defuse the situation by asking his knights for their undivided attention.

Felix now pointed his machete tip at the park, where his eyes were fixed. He buried the useless nostalgia down to lock up just as he did with everything else. What good would it do him? “I’m going through the park.”

He began to walk away, no reply following him. Sylvain’s footsteps did, however, after a brief moment. Irritation flared in Felix’s chest, but he said nothing. He didn’t have the energy to bark let alone bite. The park, had it been further into spring or sometime in the summer, would have likely been overgown, with no one tending to it. While Galatea was a smaller spread of land compared to Gautier or even Fraldarius, it was still rich, and that showed in things like the impressive playground to the east of the park; the dainty bird baths scattered here and there; and the charming and expensive-looking benches that were placed on the sides of the path they walked through, appearing every few metres, now rusted slightly. They had their initials dug into one of these benches; carved into the handsome wood of the top plank, but from the back so that passersby wouldn’t see. Their old initials. Felix, Sylvain and Dimitri had been different names at birth, ones they abandoned.

_ Felix  _ meant luck. It sounded stupid now, considering everything.

If Sylvain had asked, Felix would lie and say he didn’t remember which bench it was. Sylvain didn’t ask, so Felix didn’t have to lie. Instead, he said, “We could find a new bench.” He meant it lightheartedly, to try to bring Felix down from his mood.

A new bench. Felix considered this. “Ingrid isn’t here,” he reminded him. And— “The boar and I aren’t friends, either. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Sylvain echoed. Felix couldn’t read his tone, and he didn’t feel like looking back to read his face. “I just thought—never mind. Nothing’s getting through to you.”

At that, something in Felix’s temple jumped. He swiveled, facing Sylvain. “Nothing’s getting through to  _ me?” _

Sylvain’s eyes were tired. He wasn’t smiling, nor raising his hands in defence like he often would. Felix and Dimitri would fight. Felix and Sylvain would only come close to it. Sylvain looked unbothered. “That’s what I said.”

Felix’s lips curled.  _ His brother just died,  _ the quiet and rational side reminded him.  _ His brother’s been dead as long as Glenn has been, and he didn’t even love him. Who cares.  _ argued the louder side. The one he listened to most. Now was no different.

“You have some nerve,” Felix told him, sneering, “when you’re just as impossible to reach in that thick skull of yours. You feel so fucking sorry for yourself all the time. You and the boar, both. Like it’s all you have left. It’s sad, and it makes me sick.”

Alright. So he had some bark. For Sylvain’s sake, he hoped he wouldn’t bite.

Sylvain’s eyes darkened slightly. The shade from the branches shadowed his features, and the one beam of light that pushed through lit up his freckled skin the same position Miklan’s scar had dug from his brow to his chin. Maybe Felix wasn’t the only one who couldn’t escape looking like a dead brother. Maybe that ought to have brought them closer, but Felix didn’t dare bring anyone else close to him.

Glenn had left him. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to mourn like that again.

Sylvain breathed deeply, staring Felix down. Sylvain could never look as menacing as Miklan, though. Not in front of Felix. He stared, but Felix was good at staring back, challenging. Sylvain nodded, once and curtly. He turned, starting to walk away, straying from the path and going to cut through the trees to the other side of the park. “I’m going to find the bench.”

Felix watched in silence for a moment. He scoffed. “Fine.” Fine. He didn’t want company, anyway. He didn’t miss Sylvain weakly flipping him off without looking back, but it felt childish. As if Felix were any better, crossing his arms over his chest and huffing as he stomped away.  _ I am  _ not  _ stomping,  _ he tried to convince himself.

He stomped on a twig, and it snapped.

The birds were out. Their calls had been something Felix hadn’t realised in the midst of his stomping, until then he did, and he tipped his head back, shielding his eyes from the sun with a hand. He had seen a few deer or small things like squirrels with their guts spilling out, evidence of walkers having passed by before, but otherwise, the wildlife seemed to be thriving despite the whole world coming to a standstill. It was almost funny. Animals weren’t rising from the dead. Just humans. Felix had long given up on trying to figure out why, but sometimes he wished he could know, not even for the sake of knowing, but just so he could understand. Understand why everything was taken away from him.

Maybe it had been for the best. Felix didn’t want to be a law major, just as Glenn had been, and their father and mother before them. But he also didn’t want any of this. Win some, lose some. Lose a  _ lot.  _ He felt insufferable in his own skin the same way Sylvain likely felt insatiable in his. The same way Dimitri felt insane, in his own. Felix kicked another stone, and it skittered away. They weren’t the first broken kids to shatter as adults. Maybe they would be the last.

Felix huffed, feeling the need to punch something. He had fractured his left hand once, doing so. So to discipline himself, he sat at the next bench he approached, keeping a firm grip on his machete. The weight of his pack on his back had grown numb, but once he shouldered the straps off and rested the bag against the chipped paint of the metal arm rest, he felt just how heavy it had been. He rolled his shoulders back, sighing as he stretched, too, joints popping. It was almost pleasant. He grumbled something to himself, leaning a little forward as he sat, legs spread before him with his heels in the soil, toe tips up. For the nth time, Felix found himself wishing he knew the date.

He fumbled with the straps of the bag to look for his water bottle, taking a few small sips when he found it. He saw a squirrel make its way down its tree, nosing the small grass blades that were growing where the sun kissed the ground most. Felix watched it, wiping his mouth with the back of his glove. His father had taught him how to hunt, though begrudgingly. Something about how it was a man’s sport, only to be reminded by Glenn that he  _ was  _ a man. Just a little one. A little man could hunt rabbits, when he was learning. Could a big man like Felix hunt for a squirrel? What did squirrels even taste like?

He considered the animal for a moment, almost going to rise from the bench carefully, when he heard it. He whipped his head round so fast he hissed, evidently spooking the squirrel away into a quick sprint following the direction Sylvain had gone in. Felix pulled a face, fingers moving to massage his neck where the pain flared. Singing, he realised. Someone was singing. Felix didn’t know much about walkers, but what he was rather confident in was the fact that they couldn’t sing. At least, not like that; sweet-sounding, if a little off-key at times.

The sound was faint, and maybe if the wind blew a little harder, Felix wouldn’t have heard it at all. He got to his feet and lugged his pack back on once he put the water away. He strained his ears once he ceased moving. The singing was coming from ahead, to the left, where the path forked in the near distance. Felix flexed his hand on his machete and began to walk. The singing wasn’t clear enough to make out what lyrics were being sung, but from what he could gather from the melody, it wasn’t anything Felix had heard tormenting radio stations before the dead came.

Gravel crunched beneath his boots, and Felix had to make an effort to not completely dull his other senses to focus solely on the singing. He needed to keep himself aware of his surroundings, and yet something about the singing pulled him in. He remembered, when he was a child, how Sylvain had a mythology phase that he was sowing the seeds of in Felix’s own head. They would spend hours sometimes, when Dimitri wasn’t there, talking about wyverns, and nymphs, and sirens. This, right here, was what Felix had imagined would be a siren call, when he was small. Of course, now he could rationalise something like this; if the dead could not, in fact, sing, then this would mean that someone else was in the park with him, except for Sylvain.

Someone  _ alive. _

For a moment, it seemed as though the singing was growing quieter, so Felix sped his pace up slightly, afraid of losing the notes in the air if he didn’t move fast enough. He would have been embarrassed to admit he almost tripped over his own feet at times, just to catch up and secure his trail, so he didn’t admit shit and just kept walking. It didn’t make sense for Felix to assume this was Sylvain or Dimitri; Sylvain had gone the opposite direction, and Dimitri sounded like a dying cat parade whenever he hummed, let alone sung. He took the left and kept going, heart beating faster. He didn’t really understand why he was so desperate suddenly to willingly seek out what could be another human person, not when he had been the one to think of the  _ no groups  _ rule before Sylvain had even joined them. The more people would join them, the more mouths there would be to feed, and the more danger and risk they brought to themselves. Yet, even while remembering this, Felix walked on.

There was a small pond in the park, and some ducks swam in it like they once had. Felix could spot it through the trees a little distance away. The singing was a lot louder, now, and he was certain he was close by. He hardly noticed another squirrel leaping from one tree to the next above him as he came to the threshold between the bark and the open field that gave way for the pond. More benches were situated around it, and a small dock that people could walk on to kneel and feed the ducks. Felix had fallen in, once, and Glenn had to help fish him out. He shook violently in Rodrigue’s jacket afterwards, hugging it close once Ingrid helped strip him to his underwear. He had been around seven, maybe.

Felix stopped in his step once he saw the singer. They didn’t look dead. They had their back to him, and they were knelt on the other side of the pond. Ducks surrounded them, and they carried on singing.

_ “Corn and peas and leaves from trees! Little things to share with my ducky friends and me! Don’t be scared—the dead don’t care, and the sky’s still up so we’ll be!” _

He stood, transfixed, for a short moment, before slowly coming closer again. There was nothing spectacular about the scene before him, and yet it seemed so laughably mundane… It had appeal. Like maybe the world still had some sanity left. As he passed the second bench, he realised the stranger was offering the ducks some food; gold and green beads that were scattered from their palm and offered to the birds, likely the corn and peas that they sung about in their song.

_ “Don’t be scared, I’ve brought no bread! Sit tight and don’t fright into flight! Some more peas, maybe some seeds, and corn a-plenty still! Quack, quack, I’ll be back with more!” _

Their hair was ginger, separated into two plaits that hung at their shoulder blades. From where Felix was, he saw them wearing a puffy winter jacket, white and dusted with dirt and speckled with blood, something they would overheat in over the coming weeks if the weather took a kinder turn. They remained oblivious to Felix, who now stood a few feet away, watching silently. He held on tightly to his machete, still, just in case. He wasn’t sure how to make his presence known—when was the last time he had spoken to someone that wasn’t Dimitri or Sylvain? Were hellos outdated in this sort of society? They just didn’t seem to make sense anymore. Useless formalities and societal rules that didn’t mean shit anymore now that there was no society to police it.

So, Felix, being Felix, settled on, “Do you want to die?”

A sudden gasp, and the stranger tumbled forward onto their knees in surprise, the ducks setting off into flight despite the singer’s earlier pleas not to. They turned over to look at Felix, their eyes wide. Felix’s own rounded when he saw them reach for a rifle. Was it there before?

Felix felt a burning in his shoulder before he heard the  _ BANG! _

He stumbled back, as did the stranger as the bullet left the rifle, and cold water engulfed him. Felix inhaled murky pond water in shock, the burning feeling confusing him with how the ice of the water seeped into his bones. He thrashed, and although the pond wasn’t deep—he  _ knew  _ it wasn’t, remembered how it just barely went past Glenn’s waist when they were kids and Felix half-drowned himself—he couldn’t shake off the shock, with the pain only getting worse the more he tried to get to the surface.

Hands grabbed him, and for a moment he expected it to be Glenn again, faced etched with worry. The singer’s face greeted him instead, and they struggled to pull him fully out as he coughed violently, trembling as the still-chilly spring air hit him. He tried to push himself from the bed of the pond upwards, and it took a few attempts before he laid his back against the gravel, heaving despite the awkward position while he still wore his pack. He felt dizzy suddenly, the burning still carrying on in his shoulder, numbing it almost entirely. He wheezed.

“I’m sorry!” the stranger rushed out, hands hovering above Felix’s chest, unsure. “I—I just got scared, and—Oh, god, you’re bleeding!”

Felix hacked. “You—fucking  _ shot  _ me!”

“Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!” The stranger looked ready to hyperventilate before they fumbled to shed their puffy jacket. Felix’s sight turned blotchy, and he barely registered them covering him with their jacket. “Shit, shit, okay—Can you move your shoulder? Just—just so we can get your bag off and make you more comfortable!”

“ _ Least  _ of my fucking problems,” Felix assured them, shuddering violently.

The stranger bobbed their head, rendered useless once again. “Right. Right. Okay. Okay.”

And, Christ, Felix was going to die by the hands of a duck-feeding fiend.

Could he die? He wasn’t sure how bad the wound was, nor where it was exactly with how the flaring had spread, but if he was going to die—

Felix wasn’t one for regrets, he wasn’t, but—

“Mercy!” the stranger yelled after a deep intake of air, throwing their head back. “Mercy!  _ Mercy!” _

Okay, Felix was a dead man.

He groaned loudly. “Mercy?!” he managed. “We live in a—a post-apocalyptic world, and you’re calling for  _ mercy?!” _

The stranger shook their head, their plaits whipping about as they did. “No! No, my—my friend Mercie! M-E-R-C-I-E! Short for Mercedes. She’s a doctor! Or—she was in her final year of studies to become one, but! She’s still pretty good, and—”

Felix shut his eyes. Alright. “Pressure,” he said.

“What?”

He opened them “Pressure. Shoulder. Apply it. Call for Mercie.”

Strands of the stranger’s hair were falling in their face. “Okay,” they breathed, then nodded, firm. “Okay."

Felix winced at the pressure they applied with the heel of their palms, squeezing his eyes shut again. As the stranger kept calling out for their friend, Felix’s vision was darkening again, and he breathed out before blinking, trying to keep conscious. He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t—

“Annie?! Annie!” The voice was faint, but maybe that was because it sounded so soft. “Oh, Annie. What happened?”

The stranger—now Annie—rushed an explanation, stumbling over her words as she peeled her hands back from Felix’s shoulder, letting Mercedes come forward instead. Mercedes, Felix realised a little belatedly, was trying to undress him so that his bare shoulder was exposed, all the while listening to Annie’s ramble with nods and hums.

He snarled, although it came out more panicked, “What’re you do—” he coughed, “ _ doing?!” _

Rule Number One of being in Felix Hugo Fraldarius’ presence: do not, under any circumstance, touch him without permission. People liked to skim over this rule often (read: Sylvain Jose Gautier), but Felix  _ definitely  _ would not be so lenient with strangers, on the brink of death or otherwise.

He didn’t realise Annie had stopped until Mercedes’ face came into view. She had blue eyes, kind in ways Felix’s weren’t. “I’ll have to undress you to make sure, but I don’t know if It’s fatal. It hurts more because of the cold I imagine, and the pond water might infect it unless I clean the wound. Is that alright?”

Felix hesitated. Blotches and rings of colour danced across his vision again. He swore, whether it was in his head or out loud, he wasn’t sure. He gave a jerk of a nod, and then he hissed as his clothes were gradually peeled from the wounded area. With the shoulder now unrestrained by layers, Mercedes sat back for a moment, instructing Annie to apply pressure again for her while she looked through her bag. Annie’s hands—smaller than Mercedes’ and undoubtedly shakier—pulled away, and a sting that made Felix swallow a whine he would have been ashamed of letting out.  _ Disinfectant _ , he thought faintly. He clawed at the gravel, gritting his teeth as his hands formed into fists. Annie kept apologising and Felix ignored her, sighing harshly and staring up at the sky. The cold bit. Birds flew above. His hands kept clawing, coming out empty, and—

He felt himself jolt. Whether it was because of the pain or because of the realisation, he wasn’t sure, but of this he was: his machete was gone.

He tried to communicate it over; he needed that machete, relied on it, it was what kept him alive and sane, and if he lost it— 

Mercedes shushed him soothingly, and had it been anyone else, Felix might’ve sworn at her. Instead he just whined pathetically and slipped his eyes shut. He heard Mercedes say something about dressing the wound. Felix gave no response, hardly caring anymore. If the machete was lost, then so was he. There was no point. It didn’t make sense.

It didn’t make sense.

“Hey! On your feet, hands up, what’s—” Felix knew that voice. “Shit.  _ Shit,  _ Felix?! Felix, what—what happened?!”

Annie said, voice trembling as though she had been crying, “He scared me by accident and I-I—” she sniffled, “I shot him, and he fell into the pond, and—”

“Felix. Fe.”

He opened his eyes blearily. It took a lot of effort. Rust-red hair, brows pushed together in concern, brown eyes that ought to be smiling but weren’t. “‘Vain,” Felix croaked. He pointed weakly to the pond. “Machete…”

Sylvain looked back at the pond behind them, then at Felix. He nodded. “Okay. Okay, I’ll get it back for you. Just—just stay with me, okay? Fe?”

He hated how small his voice sounded. Felix intended to bite back like he had barked earlier, but instead his voice felt weak and hoarse. “‘Kay,” he whispered. Maybe he nodded. “‘Kay.”

The instant Sylvain disappeared from his view, Felix felt the compulsion to call him back, suddenly afraid. He didn’t want to die with strangers. Sylvain. He would die with Sylvain. He made a promise, and fuck it if the Fraldariuses weren’t good at keeping promises, even if this one would be a half-one. He must have called out anyway, because Mercedes hushed him gently again.

Annie assured, managing some enthusiasm, “He’ll be back in a second! He’s just, uh. Fishing!”

Felix felt like a kid. He felt worse than when Glenn had saved him from the pond all those years ago, even smaller than he had been, bundled up in too-big clothes that weren’t his, his voice shocked out of his system until the next day. Rodrigue had asked, often, “Why don’t you make some new friends? You can’t always rely on Dimitri or Ingrid. Or Sylvain.”

_ This  _ was why, father. Felix had evidently been deathly serious about how trying to make new friends would kill him. He felt himself laugh at that, hysterical.

He felt something cold and wet push itself into his hand. He gripped it, tightly. His machete. Felix breathed a little better. Like a medieval mercenary. And Sylvain was in his sight again, worried still. He wanted to reach up with his free hand to poke Sylvain’s cheek, tell him to stop being such a baby. He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t.

There was less of a bloodrush in his ears now, and he heard Mercedes say, “I’ve dressed it as well as I can, but I would like to take him back to the rest of my equipment to make sure nothing will worsen.”

“You—Will he die?” Sylvain sounded like he was hardly holding back something frantic inside him, but Felix didn’t trust himself on that. He had been mean to Sylvain earlier. Hell, he’d been mean the entire time since crossing paths with him again. Why should he care so much? Felix wouldn’t care so much if the roles were reversed.

Even while bleeding out, that tasted like a lie.

“I don’t think so,” Mercedes told him. “He seems rather stable. If I had arrived a moment later—”

A beat. “Okay. Okay, lead the way. I’ll just have to hope we’ll find Dimitri.”

Dimitri… Dimitri. Fuck, Felix had forgotten about Dima. Maybe it was because Dima didn’t exist anymore. That was okay. Felix didn’t quite exist the same way as he had before, either. He wondered how Dimitri would react, seeing him like this. Would he feel jealous that Felix wasn’t dying by his hand, just as the rest of the Fraldarius men of this generation did? Felix wouldn’t have died for Dimitri, he realised. That ought to have been a comfort. Felix wasn’t sure if it was.

He felt himself being lifted, his back suddenly light—someone must’ve taken his pack—and when he felt someone tug at his machete, he only mumbled incoherently, gripping the hilt tighter. In between blinks, he saw the red fuff of Sylvain’s jacket, a little brighter than his hair.

“Sylvain,” he said, or tried to say.

Felix didn’t see Glenn in the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

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> 
> please leave kudos/comments and feel free to bookmark!! until next time!!


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